Page 320 - Chinese Porcelain Vol II, Galland

YUNG-CHING.
390
shows up. The other colours are all more or less transparent.
On No. 673 we find, in the middle of the decoration, a rock lined
out in some dark colour and more or less filled with shaded
blue enamel; but in the illustration this looks more like a
flower than a rock. On one side there is a spray of paeony
with rose flowers, the foliage being in two shades of
transparent green enamel, one a blue, the other a yellow
On the other side there is a
green. prunus tree, the
trunk being in a transparent purple glaze, the twigs and
centres of the white flowers being in green shaded with some
dark pigment. There is a rose fungus at foot, and a bird in a
brown glaze with red legs perched on the tree with another bird
at the back. These bowls are never over- decorated, and
flying
No. 674 is less covered. The photographs have been arranged
so as to show the marks, and the chief ornamentation in this
case is hid at bottom ; the reader, however, will see the prunus
at one side with a spray of asters at top. The inside of both
these bowls is left perfectly plain. Some of these bowls are
very beautiful, and all are ia distinctive feature of this reign,
marked as thereto and not of in the
belonging copies anything
but a fresh of which seem to have been
past, departure they
justly proud. The decoration, it will be noticed, is very similar
to that on the No. 363, and shows an to
egg-shell plate attempt
in enamels that freehand of admired the
get style drawing by
Chinese.
Another class of bowls belonging to this period, viz. those
decorated with paeony sprays, are very beautiful, the flowers
in many cases being exquisitely painted in lovely shades of
rose. Of these we have a in Nos. 675, 676.
very good example
Diameter, 7 inches; height, 3f inches. Mark, Yung-ching,
in two blue In addition to the there is
rings. paeony spray,
a yellow chrysanthemum. The foliage is sketched in sepia,
which shows the the
through green enamel, thus forming
veining of the leaves ; while the paeony flowers are drawn in
lines, the rose tints being put on in washes at the edges, the
effect being very pleasing. Inside the only decoration is a
small orchid twig at foot in very pale green, such as is to be
found on many of the better pieces belonging to about this
time.
No. 677 is another
specimen of these bowls, but of finer