Page:Brinkley - China - Volume 1.djvu/264

 CHINA

Japan. There are also many specimens which can be traced to families connected with China, or which are known to have been made to order in that country.

While, however, the “India China” has on one hand been attributed to Japan, it has on the other, and by a still more singular hallucination, been ascribed to Lowestoft in England.

There can be no doubt that there was a considerable manufactory of porcelain at Lowestoft, but this was of the usual English soft paste. The evidence of hard paste hav- ing been made there is of the most unsatisfactory kind; chiefly the indistinct recollection of persons not acquainted with the difference between hard and soft paste. A few specimens of white Oriental porcelain may have been deco- rated at Lowestoft, such as one belonging to Lady Charlotte Schreiber; but they must be rare, as most of the services of such porcelain with European decorations seem to belong to an earlier date. The supporters of the Lowestoft theory (which is now, however, nearly exploded) must have been embarrassed by the enormous number of specimens that exist, and by the occasional occurrence of dated examples too old for the so-called invention of hard paste at Lowes- toft, such, for instance, as a Punch Bowl in this collection, dated 1769, eight years earlier than the supposed time of the invention. Why, moreover, should English painters, in executing European designs, give in the minor details those Chinese touches which at once reveal the Oriental artists? Had the subjects been Chinese such a proceeding would be natural.

The result has been that a class of Oriental porcelain for- merly little cared for, and possessing no great merit, has been elevated in popular esteem, but it is to be hoped that in time it may find its level.

Mr. Franks is apparently mistaken in his inference as to the place of manufacture of some of these porce- lains. ‘The Kwang-tun (or Canton) potteries do not seem to have produced any wares of the kind. Their outcome, which will be spoken of later on, consisted

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