Page:Brinkley - China - Volume 1.djvu/269

 PORCELAINIDECORATED

Finally, if careful note is taken of what we have said about want of solidity on the part of gold applied to porce- lains in China and Japan, it will be understood that most of the old specimens thus ornamented ought to be now entirely deprived of their gold decoration. ‘This peculiarity offered to modern painters a large field which they have not failed to exploit. They had only to recover and follow the half- effaced marks in order to renew the original decoration. Herein it is the faults of the original gold that enable us to pronounce apocryphal pieces presenting too fair an ap- pearance. In fact, if the painter, learning that a piece may safely be exposed to the low temperature of the gilding fur- nace, has recourse to the preparations employed in our studios, his gold decoration will be solidly fixed, brilliant, and capable of being burnished with an agate. If, on the contrary, he is content to use gold dust mixed with varnish and applied without caloric, he obtains a metallic tone resem- bling more closely the Chinese gold, but having thick, heavy outlines, which, moreover, may be entirely removed by scratching with a knife or by washing in an acid solution.

It need scarcely be noted that this obliteration of the gold decoration is not invariably observed in the case of old specimens. Much depended, of course, on the degree of care with which they were kept. Occasionally pieces are found to which their owners attached sufficient value to handle them so tenderly and preserve them so scrupulously that much of the gold decoration remains as fresh as it was when it emerged from the kiln. M. du Sartel concludes his analysis thus : —

In fine there remains to be noticed one more variety of secondary decoration which is of some interest. All ama- teurs are acquainted with a certain type of blue-and-white vases, generally cylindrical in form. Those that we desire to note here have their necks decorated originally with a slight, narrow border of pattern, their bodies being occupied

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