Page 584 - Chinese Porcelain Vol II, Galland

KEA-KING.
486
it, no doubt, was decorated there, and it is not easy at times to
between north and south. The surface of these
distinguish
is to be and the colour rather grey, much like
pieces apt wavy,
that of most * Bristol paste,' but it happens that the paste of
the three illustrated (Nos. 866, 867 and 868) is quite
pieces
ivory in tint, owing to the presence of iron."
"
Attached to the first page of this letter is a little drawing
of a vase (one of a pair) 28 inches high, resembling my classical
vases in every respect, except size. It is the finest pair of
these that I have come across. The model is ours, but, perhaps,
is more slender and elance. It has our borders
slightly every-
where, and even the medallion in bistre, of a temple in a land-
scape of trees, is repeated with the greatest nicety. The borders
of vine leaves, in gold upon a blue ground, are most carefully
executed, and the vases I consider worthy of a high place.
Unfortunately they have been divided between different
branches of the descendants of a celebrated millionaire of the
early part of last century, and neither party will ever part
with its vase. In mine the vine-leaf borders have
(No. 867)
degenerated into quite a Chinese vine through being copied
over and over by an unintelligent workman who did not
realize what he was doing."
"
No. 868. In the photograph beside the vase is a small
covered custard cup, one of the few pieces remaining of my
grandfather's service, made in China about eighty-two years
The is borrowed from a French one, and all the
ago. pattern
have our crest.
pieces
"
This service was decorated, to order, in China in the
early
nineteenth for who chanced to
century my grandfather, marry
a daughter of the first diplomatic representative of Great
Britain in this after the rebellion known as the
country,
'
Revolution.'
"
It has my grandfather's crest upon it, and is, doubtless, a
free copy of some French pattern of the time."
Later on
"This morning I went by appointment to the house of a
an old New Bedford who has the
lady representing family,
most magnificent of the whole series of classical (Chinese)
vases like my photograph that I have seen. Their medallions
contain, instead of the stippled landscape in bistre, a spread