Page 245 - Chinese Art, Vol II By Stephen W. Bushell

GLASS. — 69

examinations ! " referring to the two final examinations for official
degrees and the subsequent competition in the palace.
It is to the Arabs, no doubt, that the Chinese owe the technique
of enamelled glass. The period of its introduction was probably
that of the Mongol dynasty (1260-1367). This was the time when
the Arab glass-workers produced their most finished examples,
and it was also the time, as we have seen already, when the inter-
course between China and Islam, by land as well as by sea, was
most frequent. Some confirmation of this theory is afforded by the
recent discovery in mosques of the western provinces of China of
a number of hanging lamps and swelling bottles of characteristic
shape, enamelled in colours with Arabic motives in connection
with lettered scrolls pencilled in Arabic script, some of which are
now to be seen in American collections.
Arabic scrolls of similar character are often engraved on Chinese
glass up to the present day, as they are, for example, in the two
specimens which have been chosen for illustration in Figs. 84, 85,
and which are thus described on the labels :
Vase, one of a pair. Dark blue glass, with flattened spherical
body engraved in relief with Arabic inscriptions within lobed com-
partments. Carved underneath in relief with the seal of Yung
Cheng (1723-1735). Posed on a wooden stand covered with
Chinese brocade. i20-'83.
Bottle, one of a pair. Purple glass, with bulbous body and ex-
panding neck, decorated with Arabic lettering within engraved
spaces of oval and foliated outlines. i2i-'83.
The Muslim inscriptions, like those of the bronze incense burner
illustrated in Vol. I., Fig. 43, are religious formula; in the debased
script peculiar to Chinese Mohammedanism. The tall bottles
have quite a modern look, and may possibly have been carved by
the Chinese curio-dealer to give them a surreptitious value, as the
wall is evidently too thin to bear the work, so that the graver has
not been able to avoid perforating it in one '^spot. A row of