Page:Brinkley - China - Volume 1.djvu/243

 gested as a device to replace excellence of pâte and glaze. Sometimes, however, it is combined with decoration of the most elaborate and minute description.

The bottoms of Yung-ching and Chien-lung enamelled porcelains are always carefully finished on the wheel and glazed. Their pâte is fine and pure, but, in later specimens, seems a little more chalky and porous than Kang-hsi biscuit. Year-marks in seal-character are used in the great majority of cases. It may be noted also that the habit of gilding the rim of a piece does not appear to have been practised before the Chien-lung era, and even then was seldom resorted to in the case of very choice specimens. The custom became common in proportion as the potter developed a tendency to rely on decorative profusion rather than on technical excellence. Wares with polychromatic decoration manufactured during the present century are, for the most part, thus distinguished.

Special reference must be made to a very lovely and effective method of using egg-shell porcelain of the hard-paste type, namely, in the manufacture of lamp-shades or lamp-globes. Specimens of that nature were comparatively rare, their use being, of course, limited to houses of very wealthy persons. Numbers were found in the celebrated Summer Palace, at Yuen-min-yuen, which was rifled of its treasures and burned to the ground by the French and English invaders of China forty years ago. These choice examples of the potter's skill seem to have been ruthlessly destroyed by the ignorant soldiery. Occasionally, however, a similar piece may be procured from one of the great dealers in Peking. The biscuit is as thin as glass and the decoration is elabo-