Page 141 - Chinese Porcelain Vol II, Galland

FAMILLE NOIRE. 325

money is the attraction which will lure men to their destruc-
tion. The crab with its motion is of the
sidelong symbolical
crooked ways of those who covet money."
FamilU Noire.
Some time after the first volume was Mr.
published,
Winthrop wrote as follows, kindly sending illustration No.
563:
"
I have looked
lately through your book, and, as you your-
self have remarked, you seem to say very little of the black
Chinese The result of modest with
porcelain. my experience
such wares is this : The black upon the glaze (over the glaze,
that is to would be best such as
say) exemplified by pieces
that in the No. where rocks and
Salting collection (see '270),
the of a rather mat black
boughs prunus appeared upon
ground.
"
I know a magnificent piece about 2 feet high, and of the
beaker vase shape. It has the mark of the Ming period, but
is considered to be a manufacture of the era.
Khang-hy
"
Bing, at Paris, had a vase of almost the identical
character of one that your volume depicts on p. 164. It had
a white foot without mark. An examination of these
glazed
vases convinces one that the decoration has been added to
a white vase, the decoration first
perfectly completed being
and then the back filled in. The black is a
painted, ground
thin and rather mat enamel without substance, and in
entirely
this resembles the iron red grounds of the same
respect period.
In the the are washed with a delicate
Bing's example edges
fawn colour.
"Many of these black grounded pieces have a decoration
' '
'
wavering between the famille verte and the famille rose.'
"
There is another type of black ground Chinese porcelain
common. In these, the black enamel of the same
sufficiently
characteristics as those I have first mentioned, has been used
to cover the whole and it are in thick and
piece, upon painted,
rather muddy colours, flowers and butterflies. These pieces
are modern, and were back to as
brought England specimens
by the officers on the China station about the middle of the
nineteenth century. They are worthless. I know of only
these two classes of black Chinese The
over-glaze porcelains.