Page 220 - Oriental Series Japan and China, Brinkly

CHINA

of the highest importance. It establishes an affinity
between the Yu-li-hung and the celebrated Pin-kwo-

ts'ing ("peach-bloom").
As to red sous couverte found in combination with

blue, sometimes the one colour predominates, some-

times the other. Many of the specimens in this

class are of remarkable beauty and value, especially
those of the Kang-hsi and Yung-ching eras, in which

the grand blue, delicate, pure and brilliant, charac-

teristic of those epochs, consorts most effectively

with the red. In these examples also the presence

of green spots or dapples, floating in the red field,

constitutes a mark of special choiceness, and fre-

quently helps to give point to the decorative design.

Favourite subjects with the decorator were the Eight

Taoist Immortals in blue walking on red waves
;

red flowers suspended among blue scrolls ; blue drag-

ons among red clouds or waves white dragons,
;

with finely engraved scales, among red waves, pome-

granate trees, their branches and leaves in blue and

their fruit in red, and floral or leaf scrolls in red

divided by blue bands. Large and imposing speci-
mens decorated with the two colours under the glaze

are occasionally found, but where red alone is em-

ployed the choicest examples are generally small.

Finally it may be noted that many specimens of
these porcelains carry the six-ideograph mark (Ta-

tsing Kang-hsi nien chih, or Ta-tsing Yung-ching nien

chih} in blue sous couverte. The reader should per-
haps be reminded that no reference is here made to

over-glaze decoration in red combined with blue

sous couverte. That belongs to an entirely different

category.

The next year-period after Kang-hsi was Yung-

170