Page 149 - Chinese Porcelain Vol II, Galland

FAMILLE VERTE. 329

vogue at present. I have been reminded of this lately, and
have had the distinction marked."
strongly
"
Mr. Hippisley, at p. 440, says : Black grounds are produced
in a of either the thickness of the coloured
variety ways by
glaze or by laying several shades of different colour one on the
other ; or, again, by laying a blue glaze on a brown laque, or
vice versa" to this method of a black
Eeferring producing
surface, Mr. Winthrop writes : " I have just been shown a few
of fine old Chinese, one of them a
pieces remarkably being
black vase without any decoration whatever. The form is
pretty good, and upon a very close inspection it is found
that it is a blue so intense that it looks black, and the real
colour can only be seen just the least bit around the mouth
and foot, where the colour has run thin. It is doubtless a
Kien-lung piece, and I have never seen one like it."
The to Mr. G. E.
following very interesting piece belongs
Davies.
No. 564. "Exhibited Fine Arts Club, 1896.
Burlington
Description, 383 and 384. A white ground beaker, one of a
17 inches in It is covered all over with a brownish
pair, height.
white
black enamel, leaving which form rocks, out of
spaces
which run stalks of the tree to which are attached
prunus
small branches. From these hang clusters of buds and flowers
of the and on one or two between the rocks
prunus, places
a small The rocks and stalks are
chrysanthemum appears.
shaded with the same brownish black, and the of the
petals
flowers are in the same
depicted colouring.
"
One of these beakers was sent to me from China
nearly
and the other I found in London some two
twenty years ago,
or three years subsequently in the hands of a dealer who was
much in touch at that time with a French importer. Un-
fortunately, they are not marked, and are difficult pieces to
put an exact date to, but I am inclined myself to attribute
them to the later portion of the Kang-he era."
We must now, as it were, go back and continue on the
Famille Verte with Blue Enamel.
To with, we will take four excellent
begin specimens
to Mr. G. R. Davies.
belonging
No. 565. "Exhibited Burlington Fine Arts Club, 1896.