Page:Brinkley - China - Volume 1.djvu/183

 thus blessed by fortune and happy in opportunity there remains an alternative not very much less satisfactory, the collection of blue-and-white. A good specimen of this charming ware never palls upon the taste; acquaintance only develops appreciation of its qualities. As an article of ornamental furniture it is always delightful. The virtuoso who is so fortunate as to be able to decorate a room with blue-and-white and blue-and-white only, has beside him a perpetual source of æsthetic enjoyment. Other porcelains need, as a rule, an appropriate environment; but blue-and-white adapts itself to every companionship, and when its advantages in that respect come to be more generally recognised, an over-mantel or a cabinet of chinghwa specimens will probably find a place in every artistically furnished house.

No detailed reference has thus far been made to the subjects chiefly chosen by Chinese potters for the decoration of porcelains. On a vast majority of specimens the dragon (lung) figures in some form or other. His shapes are numerous. Sometimes he is found so thoroughly conventionalised as to be almost unrecognisable; sometimes, he assumes an altogether realistic shape, and is limned performing a dance intended to be terrible but usually only grotesque; sometimes he is depicted with skill such as could be inspired only by a belief in his reality. But it must be confessed that there is something distinctly wearisome about this unceasing repetition of a fabulous monster which cannot be rendered picturesque except by methods of representation scarcely possible on porcelain. Yet the Chinese decorator could hardly give less prominence to a monster that occupies such an important place in the traditions and