Page:Brinkley - China - Volume 1.djvu/139

 their inferiority from an artistic point of view can scarcely be questioned. Brilliant and pure as is the colour of their decoration, and skilfully executed as are their miniature designs, they lack the dazzling contrast shown by the Kai-pien-yao's snow-white waxy body and its deep but soft blue ornamentation.

In the "Illustrated Catalogue" of H’siang six specimens of Hsuan-tê blue-and-white ware are depicted, under the name of Ming Hsuan-yao. This method of distinguishing wares by the year-name of the period of their production came into general vogue among Chinese connoisseurs as far back as the fifteenth century, but the reader must understand that under the title H’suan-yao not blue-and-white porcelain alone but all the choice varieties of the reign are included. H’siang's specimens are small pieces—an ink-pallet, 3½ inches long; a miniature vase, 2 or 3 inches high; a jar in the form of a goose, 6 inches long; an elephant-shaped jar, 6 inches long; a tea cup, 2½ inches in diameter, and a lamp, 5 inches high and 4½ inches in diameter. The decorative designs on all these examples, the tea-cup excepted, are wholly subordinate to the shapes of the pieces. There is no attempt to convert the surface into a painter's canvas. The brilliant tone of the blue, the pure white "mutton-fat-like" colour of the body, and the caligraphic excellence of the year-mark—these are things which constitute the important "points" of the specimens. The subject on the tea-cup—a gnarled pine-tree, with orchids and fungus springing from the grass beneath—is eulogised as being "evidently from the pencil of a celebrated landscape painter." But the remaining designs are essentially of the formal, mechanical type, as becomes