Page:Brinkley - China - Volume 1.djvu/233

 The quality of the Kang-hsi enamelled porcelain is exceptionally good. Neither among wares that preceded nor among those that succeeded it were there any of finer pâte or more lustrous and uniform glaze. The exposed portions of the biscuit resemble soap-stone, so smooth are they to the touch and so compact in texture. Asa rule, with very rare exceptions, the bottom of every piece is carefully finished and glazed. Year-marks occur seldom: they are commonest upon small and choice specimens. Other marks are found, but they usually take the form of a four-footed censer, a leaf, or something equally without chronological significance.

In the majority of elaborately enamelled Kang-hsi porcelains blue under the glaze is either absent altogether, or plays a very subordinate rôle. Green is the most conspicuous colour. "Famille Verte," in short, is a well chosen epithet, though not applicable to the egg-shell ware spoken of above. But there was also manufactured during the same era a class of porcelain in the decoration of which blue sous couverte constituted a feature scarcely less important than enamels. The fact is interesting because a singular resemblance, verging on identity, exists between the style of this ware and that of the celebrated Imari porcelain of Japan. It is easily conceivable that Western connoisseurs have often been perplexed to distinguish the one from the other. M. Jacquemart, who applies to such porcelains the term "Famille Chrysanthémo-Pæonéenne," observes:—"It is the more necessary to create a name for this family since it includes Chinese and Japanese productions empirically confounded under the false denomination of Japanese porcelain." M. Jacquemart's theory is