Page 21 - Oriental Series Japan and China, Brinkly

PORCELAIN AND POTTERY

It was natural, in view of this appreciative mood

of French amateurs, that the first researches into the

subject of Chinese keramics should be made by

French authors. M. Stanilas Julien led the way

with his translation of the Ching-te-chen Tao-lu, or

" History of Ching-te-chen Keramics." This work

was published in 1856, and has remained since then

an authoritative text-book. But M. Julien laboured

under a very great disadvantage. He possessed no

knowledge of the processes described in the Chinese

volume. He was simply a student of languages,

competent to render the meaning of an ideograph,

but without either the experience of a connoisseur or

the education of an artist. Nothing could have been
more extravagant than to expect that his interpreta-

tion of the Tao-lu would be free from error. The

book itself, apart from the special attainments its

subject demanded, was not calculated to facilitate a

translator's task. Compiled, for the most part, in

the early years of the present century, that is to say,

when Chinese potters were already beginning to lose

their ancient dexterity, its author relied upon tradi-

tion for the bulk of his materials and, to crown all,
;

died before the volume was completed. The com-

pilation and publication of the information he had

collected devolved upon his pupil, Ching Ting-kwei,

who, judged by the account he gives of himself, had

little knowledge of keramic processes. One valuable

work the author of the Tao-lu was able to consult,
namely, the Tao-shu, or " Keramic Annals," written

nearly half a century previously during the reign of

the celebrated Chien-lung. But neither the Tao-shu

nor the Tao-lu aimed at furnishing such information

as a Western student desires. The object of both