Page:Brinkley - China - Volume 1.djvu/197

 and the lustre of the glaze. Many varieties of red are found on porcelains thus decorated, sang de bœuf, ruby, bean-blossom, reddish brown, liver colour and maroon. It is maintained, however, by Chinese collectors—to whose verdict the foreign connoisseur must, of course, bow in such matters—that the potter's highest aim was to produce a colour combining brilliancy and strength with softness and liquidity. According to this canon, what the amateur has to look for is the red of fresh blood or of a ripe cherry, and his standard may be that the purer and more dazzling the tone, the choicer the specimen. In old-time descriptions of such decoration sharp definition of the red design's contours is spoken of as a special tour de force, the sudden juxtaposition of the snow-white ground tending to give salience-and emphasis to the decoration. But in some examples highly prized and plainly deserving the esteem in which they are held, a slight clouding of red appears at the edges and in the interstices of the design, and the result is soft and charming. It need scarcely be said that no variety of this ware is choicer than that in which the red is of the bean- blossom (or "peach-blow") type. Moreover, although the colour does not belong to any of the very rarest types—fresh-blood, ruby, ripe-cherry, or peach-bloom—but falls below them in strength and brilliancy, the specimen may still have claims to a prominent place in any collection. A distinctly impure muddy red alone condemns the ware. In the great majority of really choice examples the red shows dappling and spotting with transparent green, varying from emerald to the colour of powdered tea-leaf (chamo). This feature is considered