Page:Brinkley - China - Volume 1.djvu/22

 dom will never be able to reproduce them with absolute success. Those who have read the accounts, recorded in Chinese and Japanese literature, of men almost deified as the discoverers of some new boccaro clay; or who have heard the fond tradition how the pâte of every choice piece fired at the potteries of the Po-yang Lake had invariably received a century's manipulation; or how the materials of celebrated glazes were ground and re-ground during the life-time of half a generation until they were reduced to impalpable powder; or how, to distinguish the true colouring pigment—the Mohammedan blue, worth more than its weight in gold—from the many imperfect compounds which nature's laboratory offered, was an accomplishment possessed by the most gifted experts only; those who are familiar with all these things have no difficulty in understanding that the decadence of such extraordinary processes, such labours of almost crazy love, was an inevitable outcome of the world's changed conditions. Regarded, therefore, as works of art which have ceased to be produced, and which must become every day more unprocurable, the Hawthorns and other hard-paste blue-and-white specimens which in recent years created a furore among English collectors, were not unworthy of the homage they received. But from a Chinese point of view, such pieces are not to be placed in the very first rank of keramic masterpieces. The instinct of the French amateurs of former years directed them more truly when it inspired their love of monochromatic wares and of soft-paste pieces decorated with blue sous couverte, and the instinct of American collectors has happily followed in the same direction.