Page:Brinkley - China - Volume 1.djvu/182

 capacity of modern potters to reproduce them as it is to imitate the Kai-pien-yao itself. Their magnificent colour, the rich lustre of their glaze, and the thoroughly satisfactory quality of their beauty have thus far remained, and will apparently continue to remain, incomparable. Not infrequently, too, specimens are found which, though not absolutely of egg-shell thinness, approach it so closely as to be scarcely distinguishable. These are keramic chefs-d'œuvre of the highest order: even the most fastidious Chinese connoisseur frankly admits their merits. The more solid pieces, too, have a charm of their own: to brightness of effect they add a suggestion of restfulness and purity that raises them very close to the rank of fine monochromes. ‘There can be no doubt that, so far as porcelains are concerned, the ideal objects of virtu are monochromes; the noble reds (peach-bloom, bean-blossom, sang-de-bœuf, liquid-dawn, precious-ruby, coral, rouge, jujube, vermilion, and Rose-du-Barry); the strong, soft greens (cucumber-rind, apple-rind, peacock, and céladon); the glowing and delicate blues (Mazarin, cerulean of the sky after rain, and kingfisher); the shell-like or solid yellows; the exquisite satin or waxy whites (above all the soft-paste, Ting-yao); the transmutation tints and the many other colours at once curious and lovely that bear witness to the Chinese keramist's inventive genius and fertility of resource, constitute a catalogue of masterpieces within the range of which a collector with ample means and wide opportunity may well be content to limit himself. But how many amateurs can afford, how many, even though their resources permit, can hope, to procure any large assemblage of specimens so costly and now so rare? To those not