Page 320 - Chinese pottery and porcelain : an account of the potter's art in China from primitive times to the present day

178 Chinese Pottery and Porcelain

the eighteenth century Astbury ware of Staffordshire ; or, again,
it is polished on the lapidary's wheel like the Bottger ware of Dresden.
Inlaid designs in fine white clay and marbling are further varieties

;

and occasionally coloured glazes of great beauty occur. But these

will be discussed presently.

There is no limit to the variety of articles made by the Yi-hsing

potters, but they chiefly excelled in small and dainty articles for
the writing-table, the toilet, and the tea-table, and personal orna-
ments. Their tea wares have always been highly prized in Japan,
where they have been cleverly copied in Banko ware and by the
Kioto potters. Similarly, when tea-drinking became an institu-
tion in Europe in the last half of the seventeenth century, and the
East India companies set themselves to supply the necessary
apparatus from China, the Yi-hsing red teapots became fashion-
able, and were immediately imitated by enterprising potters. The
Dutch and English seem to have been the first to succeed in this

new departure, and we read that Ary de Milde and W. van Een-

horn, of Delft, applied for a monopoly of the manufacture in Holland
in 1679, while John Dwight, of Fulham, included the " Opacous,
redd and Dark coloured Porcellane or China " in the patent taken
out in London five years later. The brothers Elers, of Dutch
extraction, started the industry in Staffordshire about 1693, and

made red stoneware teapots scarcely distinguishable from the
Chinese, and which sold for a guinea a piece.

The Yi-hsing wares in the celebrated Chinese ceramic collection
formed by Augustus the Strong at Dresden supplied designs for the
fine red stoneware made in the first years of the eighteenth century
by Bottger, who also discovered the secret of true porcelain in
Europe and founded the famous Meissen porcelain factory.

From the earliest days of their importation the Yi-hsing wares
have been known in Europe, especially in Italy, Spain, and Portugal,
by the Portuguese name of buccaro. The true buccaro is a scented

pottery, first imported from Central and South America, where it

was made by the Indian population and afterwards manufactured
in Portugal and Spain ; and Count Lorenzo Magalotti, who wrote
in 1695, protested against the application of the name " to cer-

tain unglazed pieces of Oriental origin," asserting that " true Buc-

caro never came from China or Japan, and that they must not
be looked for out of the pottery sent over from Central America