Page:Brinkley - China - Volume 1.djvu/426

with the plaster is deprived of its moisture by the absorbent properties of the plaster, and adheres to the surface of the mould. The mould being then reversed and the liquid pâte run off, there remains a thickness of porcelain varying with the absorbent properties of the plaster and the time during which these are suffered to act. The Chinese keramist may have been acquainted with this process, but evidence points in the other direction. At all events, he succeeded in manufacturing porcelain so thin that, according to his own description, it seemed to consist of glazing material only.

With respect to the stoving of Chinese porcelain, there are few specially interesting points to be noticed. The temperature to which the kiln was raised fell short of that employed in Europe by from two to three hundred degrees. The furnace, in ordinary cases, was kept alight for about thirty-six hours, and after its extinction, the contents of the kiln were left to cool gradually. The latter process occupied four or five days, and care was taken to exclude the air during the cooling. It should be mentioned that the heating also was gradual, the maximum temperature not being developed until several hours after lighting the furnace. Various effects were produced by the introduction of currents of air while the porcelain was incandescent, but these have already been spoken of in the context of the wares they concern. M. d'Entrecolles, describing the practice in vogue at the beginning of the eighteenth century, when he was in China, says:—"The furnace is heated during a day and night, after which two men take it in turn to feed wood incessantly to the fire. The quantity of wood consumed by each