Page:Brinkley - China - Volume 1.djvu/154

 them with great enthusiasm. The designs were simple. Fish (carp) were the favourite motive, and after them the "peach of longevity," or agarics (a species of fungus). These last were sometimes combined with different forms of the ideograph (fu), signifying "good fortune." According to the Tao-lu, the number of fish, peaches, or agarics depicted was always three, and the number of ideographs five. But H’siang's illustrations show that though this may have been true with regard to the peaches, the rule did not invariably hold in the instance of the fishes. The ground of H’siang's specimens is said to have been "pure as driven snow," the fish "boldly outlined and red as fresh blood or vermilion, of a brilliant colour, dazzling the eye." Tiny cups or miniature bowls seem to have been the only examples surviving in H’siang's time. Of the cups decorated with peaches he adds that "only two or three are known to exist within the four seas." So much prized were choice examples of early wares decorated in this style that they received the name of Pao-ki, or precious vases. Vulgar tradition says that the grand tone of the red was obtained by mixing powdered rubies with the colouring matter. But that is evidently a myth. The substance employed was a silicate of copper. Chinese connoisseurs seem to have preferred Hsuan-tê specimens of this class to all others, but there is no reason to doubt that pieces scarcely if at all inferior were produced by subsequent Ming potters at any rate up to the end of the sixteenth century, and such was certainly the case at the factories of Kang-hsi, Yung-ching, and Chien-lung, during the present dynasty.

From the list of porcelains requisitioned for the palace during the Wan-li era, it appears that red