Page 219 - Oriental Series Japan and China, Brinkly

PORCELAIN DECORATED

and the lustre of the glaze. Many varieties of red

are found on porcelains thus decorated, sang de bceuf,

ruby, bean-blossom, reddish brown, liver colour and
maroon. It is maintained, however, by Chinese col-
lectors to whose verdict the foreign connoisseur

must, of course, bow in such matters that the

potter's highest aim was to produce a colour combin-
ing brilliancy and strength with softness and liquidity.
According to this canon, what the amateur has to
look for is the red of fresh blood or of a ripe cherry,

and his standard may be that the purer and more

dazzling the tone, the choicer the specimen. In
old-time descriptions of such decoration sharp defini-

tion of the red design's contours is spoken of as a

special tour de force, the sudden juxtaposition of the

snow-white ground tending to give salience and em-
phasis to the decoration. But in some examples

highly prized and plainly deserving the esteem in
which they are held, a slight clouding of red ap-
pears at the edges and in the interstices of the
design, and the result is soft and charming. It
need scarcely be said that no variety of this ware is
choicer than that in which the red is of the bean-

blossom (or "peach-blow") type. Moreover, al-

though the colour does not belong to any of the

very rarest types fresh-blood, ruby, ripe-cherry,

or peach-bloom but falls below them in strength

and brilliancy, the specimen may still have claims
Ato a prominent place in any collection.
dis-

tinctly impure muddy red alone condemns the ware.

In the great majority of really choice examples the

red shows dappling and spotting with transparent

green, varying from emerald to the colour of pow-
dered tea-leaf (chamo). This feature is considered

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