Page:Brinkley - China - Volume 1.djvu/172

 their shape being apparently unsuited to the "Hawthorn" decoration. That is a matter of taste, however. In respect to quality, there is nothing primarily to choose between the three kinds, jars, pots and vases.

In many specimens of "Hawthorn" the surface is broken by white medallions, within which are painted formal designs, floral subjects, mythical animals or personages, in blue. In such cases the surface decoration is generally of the petal-cluster type, and the painting within the panels is weak and mechanical.

Marks of date are not found on "Hawthorns" of the Kang-hsi era; or, if they occur, are so rare as to be virtually non-existent for collectors' purposes. Sometimes a leaf of the artemisia, a conventional lotus, or a representation of the Che plant (silk-worm oak) is painted on the bottom of such specimens. The absence of a year-mark is partially explained by the fact that in 1667 the Emperor prohibited this manner of distinguishing porcelains, and at the same time ordered that verses, or historical quotations, recording the actions of great men, should not be used in decorating ware, since inscriptions that deserved reverence were thus condemned to share the fate of the perishable substance on which they were painted. There is no record to indicate that this prohibition was removed at a subsequent period of the same reign. Yet reasons exist for suspecting that such was the case. On specimens of seventeenth-century manufacture the Kang-hsi year-mark—Ta-Tsing Kang-hsi nien chi—certainly occurs much more rarely than might be expected, having regard to the great activity of the keramic industry at that epoch. But, on the other hand, it occurs too often to permit the supposi-