Page:Brinkley - China - Volume 1.djvu/198

of the highest importance. It establishes an affinity between the Yu-li-hung and the celebrated Pin-kwo-ts'ing ("peach-bloom").

As to red sous couverte found in combination with blue, sometimes the one colour predominates, sometimes the other. Many of the specimens in this class are of remarkable beauty and value, especially those of the Kang-hsi and Yung-ching eras, in which the grand blue, delicate, pure and brilliant, characteristic of those epochs, consorts most effectively with the red. In these examples also the presence of green spots or dapples, floating in the red field, constitutes a mark of special choiceness, and frequently helps to give point to the decorative design. Favourite subjects with the decorator were the Eight Taoist Immortals in blue walking on red waves; red flowers suspended among blue scrolls; blue dragons among red clouds or waves; white dragons, with finely engraved scales, among red waves, pomegranate trees, their branches and leaves in blue and their fruit in red, and floral or leaf scrolls in red divided by blue bands. Large and imposing specimens decorated with the two colours under the glaze are occasionally found, but where red alone is employed the choicest examples are generally small. Finally it may be noted that many specimens of these porcelains carry the six-ideograph mark (Ta-tsing Kang-hso nien chih, or Ta-tsing Yung-ching nien chih) in blue sous couverte. The reader should perhaps be reminded that no reference is here made to over-glaze decoration in red combined with blue sous couverte. That belongs to an entirely different category.

The next year-period after Kang-hsi was Yung-