Page:Brinkley - China - Volume 1.djvu/423

tion for its great difficulties. That they thoroughly appreciated and would gladly have emulated the brilliant velvet-like glazes of China, there can be no doubt. But they never succeeded in producing anything of comparable beauty, although, so far as concerns composition their glazes did not differ from those of the Chinese potters sufficiently to account for the signally superior results obtained by the latter. On the whole, it appears a reasonable conclusion that the exceptional qualities of Chinese glazes were due in part only to the nature of the materials employed, and that they owed something to the troublesome and seemingly unscientific method of their application.

A word of explanation may be added here with reference to the expressions couleurs de grand feu and couleurs de demi-grand feu. In the case of the former, the colouring matter is mixed with the glaze, applied to the raw pâte, and exposed to the full heat of the porcelain furnace. In the case of the latter, the colouring matter is added to a fusible base, is applied to the ware already baked, and is subjected subsequently to a reduced temperature under which the base vitrifies and adheres to the glaze at the same time as the colours develop. The method of mixing the colouring matter with the glaze, and exposing the finished piece to a high temperature was adopted by the Chinese in the case of their richest monochromatic and polychromatic glazes, with exceptions to be presently noted. The couleurs de demi-grand feu were employed in the decoration of enamelled porcelain. The colours were obtained from metallic oxides. Binoxide of copper gave green, bluish green, and turquoise blue; oxide of cobalt, blue; oxide of antimony, yellow; oxide of iron, brown and ver-