Page 137 - Chinese Porcelain Vol II, Galland

FOREIGN INFLUENCE. 323

" "
after 1640 it would seem that this Jesuit china was smuggled
into Japan, for Pere d'Entrecolles, writing in 1722, says:
"
They brought me from the rubbish of a large shop a little
plate which I value beyond the finest porcelain piece though
a thousand old. On the bottom a crucifix
years is painted
between the Virgin Mary and St. John. Formerly they
exported (as it's said) a great deal of this sort to Japan, but
the enemies of religion had hindered any of it being made
these sixteen Most of the Jesuit china that we meet
years."
with to the or later so must have been
belongs Kang-he periods,
made after 1640, and no doubt there was a demand for it in China
from the trade with which seems to have
itself, apart Japan,
continued for some sixty years after Christianity was supposed
to have been rooted out. Who the "enemies of religion"
were that its we are not told, presumably
stopped production
the Chinese Government, for it seems clear that it was force
and not mere absence of demand that an end to the
put
manufacture of it.
All these influences seem to have been
foreign merely
submitted to for the time unless where, as in the case of
being,
Buddhism, it sank into the heart of the people and had come
to The court order of French enamels, or
stay. might copies
foreign countries might call for strange shapes and designs,
but as soon as the fashion changed or the demand ceased the
artisans returned to the old and became once more
paths
Chinese. In the made for home use
delightfully porcelain
there is little trace of influence to be
comparatively European
found it reached them their and when the
; through pockets,
inducement ceased had done with it, for saw
they they nothing
in it to admire.
In No. 557 we have a specimen of European influence
as met with in to the second half of this
pieces belonging
A blue and white dish with sides. Diameter,
reign. scalloped
lOi inches 1 inch. No mark. The decoration
; height,
on the sides is thoroughly Chinese, but in the centre an
has been made to three
attempt portray European ladies,
with a male attendant. This is a of a
probably copy rough
sketch by some European so long from home that the style
of ladies' dress, with the of the head had
exception high gear,
been forgotten ; the colour in this part of the decoration is put