Page 18 - J. P Morgan Collection of Chinese Art and Porcelain

PREFACE

even, of the true porcelain so eloquently described

by early Chinese writers as essential to our accept-
ance of its existence at the period to which they as-

cribe it, we shall not be gratified. Chinamen vene-
rate antiquity more than they do anything else; they

have always exaggerated its virtues and inculcated

its importance, and have never been averse to culti-

vating the fictitious side of it, either in literature or
Wein art.
do not know yet, by the possession of the

actual objects, identified and proved, when true por-

celain was produced. It is doubtful if it preceded the

dynasty of the Mings, and it is more than probable

that the porcelain attributed to earlier periods was

stoneware or celadon. That it was kaolinic, and

dense and vitrified throughout, may be believed; but
that it was true porcelain we have no trustworthy

evidence. The tendency of all periods in China that

we are able to review has been to exaggerate antiquity

or counterfeit it. When the trade in porcelain with

Western nations opened in the sixteenth century, it

was in great part founded upon wares of a fictitious

antiquity.

The greater part of the porcelain imported into
European countries in the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries was supposed to be antique porcelain. The
Chinese assumed that the European customer would
value the commodity for the same qualities that made
it esteemed in China, and it was accordingly dated
back a century or so. Those who then took account
of the date-marks appear to have accepted them in
good faith, and they remained undisputed until to-
ward the end of the nineteenth century. Perhaps
the most familiar date-mark upon the Chinese por-

celain so widely distributed in all European countries
in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was that
of the reign of Ch'eng-hua, 1465-1487. Thousands

upon thousands of pieces of it survive, but we have

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