Page 290 - Chinese Art, Vol II By Stephen W. Bushell

84 — CHINESE ART.

enamelled on porcelain as well as on copper, and some of the service
would occasionally include both excipients in the same set, an urn
for hot water, and a tea-pot enamelled on copper, for example,
being accompanied by a milk-jug, sugar-bowl, and tea-cups
enamelled on egg-shell porcelain. A curious bowl is figured in
Du Sartel's La Porcelaine de Chine (page 115) as an example of the
surpassing skill of the Chinese in their imitations of Limoges enamels
at this time. It is a shallow bowl with loop handles of fine and
light porcelain, formerly in the Marquis Collection at Paris, which is
described as a most deceptive imitation, both in shape and decora-
tion, of the piece of Limoges enamel which served as its model in
China :
" The exterior has a black ground with white ornaments touched witli
gold ; the interior is decorated with polyclirome paintings of Howers and
fruit executed with the enamels of the famillc vertc. Near a basket of flowers
in the bottom of the bowl is a faithful reproduction of the monogram I.L. of
the Limoges enameller, Jean Laudin."
Passing on from the earlier famille verte style to the famillc rose
decoration of Chinese ceramic art, the remarkable similarity of
the motives of decoration, and of the enamel colouring of some of
the painted enamels in copper with those of contemporary pieces
of the kind fashioned in egg-shell porcelain is indeed sufficient to prove
them productions of the same workshops. Round dishes and plates
occur in the two materials backed with the same rose-coloured
grounds, and decorated with identically brocaded patterns and
diapered bands, interrupted by foliated panels filled with pre-
cisely similar pictures, all executed in the same soft-coloured
enamels.
The enamel colours used in Canton are well known from analyses
made by Ebelmen and Salvetat of a collection actually taken from
the palette of the enameller, while he was working at his table, by
a French attache in the year 1844, and published in the Reciicil des
Travaux scientifiques de M. Ebelmen (Vol. L, page 377).
The Chinese themselves consider copper a far less noble o'.iject