Page:Brinkley - China - Volume 1.djvu/153

 tially thick and solid, to which durable quality may doubtless be ascribed the fact that many examples survive. The quality of their blue decoration is characteristic. Its colour is deep and full, but distinctly tinged with purple. Seldom does it approach the brilliant pure tone of its celebrated predecessors. The body of the piece in a marked degree partakes also of that defect more or less common in all hard-paste blue-and-white porcelains: its white, pervaded by a tinge of blue, contrasts weakly with the colour of the decoration. With regard to the designs chosen by the potters, they became more elaborate in proportion as the ware forfeited its claims to consideration on account of brilliant colour and fine pâte.

About this period the use of red under the glaze began to be largely resorted to. Red and blue are the only colours thus employed by the Chinese potters, the red varying from brilliant vermilion to maroon and liver-colour. The date of their first appearance in combination is not easy to determine. Tradition and the evidence of existing specimens go to show that the innovation may probably be ascribed to the second half of the sixteenth century. The fashion is supposed by certain commentators to have owed something of its popularity to the failure of choice cobalt supplies from foreign sources and native mines alike, decoration in blue alone thus ceasing to be sufficiently attractive. But such a theory is not reconcilable with either the past or the subsequent history of the ware. Red by itself had already been used as a sub-glaze pigment during the Hsuan-tê era (1426-1436). Pieces of the choicest character were thus decorated. Five of them are figured in the "Illustrated Catalogue" of H’siang, who speaks of