Page:Brinkley - China - Volume 1.djvu/259

French collectors. Over this were moulded floral designs, scrolls, and geometrical patterns in white slip, the effect being at once rich and soft. A rarer variety has mazarine blue ground. In old porcelains of the latter class the tone of the blue is rich and pure, but in more modern pieces it passes into a species of slate-colour, or greyish blue. Many examples of the last variety are to be met with among the productions of the Taou-kwang and subsequent eras. They are generally coarse, clumsy porcelains, evidently manufactured for use rather than ornament. The white slip fashion of decoration probably had its origin about the close of the productive period of the Ming dynasty; that is to say, towards the end of the sixteenth century. It is certain that glazes of light golden brown or deep coffee colour were then in vogue, and these, with white slip decoration, are to be found on pieces that exhibit all the characteristics of later Ming porcelain.

It would be a hopeless task to attempt the enumeration of all the fashions developed by Chinese keramists in the decoration of enamelled porcelains. The principal types only have been mentioned above.

That Chinese decorative fashions were largely influenced by European intercourse from the Kang-hsi era downwards is beyond question. In the "Annals of Fu-liang," quoted in the Tao-lu, the various enamels and ancient porcelains produced or imitated at Ching-tê-chên in the eighteenth century are catalogued. It is there recorded that the Chinese potters "imitated European vases having figures chiselled or moulded," and that "in the manner of painting, or applying enamels to these vases as well as to other pieces, they copied closely the European style of art."