Page 496 - Oriental Series Japan and China, Brinkly

CHINA

China leads to special fashions in the pictures they
are employed to produce, and it is to this fact that
porcelains manufactured by the Chinese and the Jap-

anese owe their distinctive aspect. Some colours are

applied directly, just as they are procured in the
market. Others, before being used, require a vary-
ing addition, doubtless determined beforehand by

experience. They are all thus brought to develop

uniformly at a fixed temperature. An assortment

obtained in Canton, where it was taken from the

table of a Chinese painter, gives an example of a pal-

ette fully prepared for use. The necessary additions
must have been already made, and we see that the

white lead added was in very small quantities, if even
that disclosed by the analysis is not due to the begin-
ning of a change in the colour during the operation

of grinding. It would carry me too far were I to

compare in succession each of the Chinese colours
examined above with its corresponding colour as used
in Europe, whether at Sevres or elsewhere. I shall
limit myself, therefore, to noting in a few words
and in a general manner the essential differences that
distinguish the two palettes. It will thus be possible
to appreciate naturally the opposing aspects of Euro-
pean porcelains and of similar wares manufactured in
China or Japan ; aspects so different that it is impos-
sible, even at first sight, to confound the productions
of the two countries.

" I have said that in Europe colours for painting
hard porcelain are formed by mixing certain oxides

with certain fluxes. And I have noted that the

Chinese colours differ completely as much in respect

of the nature of the constituents of the flux as in the

proportions of the colouring oxide. Differences no

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