Page 22 - Oriental Series Japan and China, Brinkly

CHINA

alike was mainly to preserve a catalogue of the most

celebrated wares with their dates and places of manu-

facture and occasionally some meagre details of their

nature. M. Julien, then, however conscientious as a

linguist, could not fail to be misled and to mislead.

He was followed, in 1875, by M. Jacquemart, an

over-speculative connoisseur, who, great as was the

debt of gratitude under which he placed collectors,
wrote unfortunately in such a way as to mix the

keramics of China, Korea, and Japan in confusion.

Taking some of the choicest specimens of Chinese

work, he allotted them to Korea or Japan ; content

to assume, in the one case, that Chinese artists never

depicted Mandarins on their vases, and that, conse-

quently, all vases thus decorated must be Japanese ;

and in the other, that any piece the decoration of

which seemed to him to possess both Chinese and

Japanese characteristics must come from a country

between the two empires, namely, from Korea.

Thus wherever Julien had led the public astray,

Jacquemart helped to render the aberration perma-

nent. One example is conspicuous : Julien, falsely

rendering a single word, said that the most esteemed

variety of the Kuan-yad (Imperial ware) manufac-

tured under the Sung dynasty (9601279) was blue.
Jacquemart thereupon wrote, " Le decor le plus

ancien et le plus estime au Celeste-Empire est celui

en camaieu bleu. II s' execute sur la pate simplement

sechee apres le travail du tournage, et crue on pose
;

la couverte ensuite, on cuit, et des lors la peinture

devient inattaquable. Dans les temps les plus an-

ciens, le cobalt n'etait pas d'une purete irreprochable ;

son plus ou moins grand eclat peut done aider a fixer

des dates approximatives. Pour prouver jusqu'a quel

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