Page:Brinkley - China - Volume 1.djvu/275

 PORCELAING DECORATED

attractive. In appraising their merit the amateur has to consider before everything purity of colour, rich- ness of glaze, and careful technique. Any muddiness in the tone of the enamels or roughness of surface is a distinct mark of inferiority, and the same may be said of clumsy technique, though the collector must not look for a very high degree of finish in any ware of this class.

It will thus be seen that though both porcelain and faience are included by some connoisseurs in the “‘ Three-coloured”’ ware, the two are essentially different in appearance. The porcelain, in fact, re- ally belongs to the Famille Verte, from typical exam- ples of which it is only distinguished by paucity of coloured enamels. The term Famille Verte, as already explained, is of European origin: it has no existence in China. The amateurs of the Middle Kingdom recognise the distinctions of Wu-tsat and San-tsai (five colours and three colours), but both types of ware may not improperly be included in the « Green Fam- ily’’ by those who prefer the latter nomenclature. Porcelain of the San-tsai variety was manufactured at Ching-té-chéng, but the faience or stone-ware men- tioned above, came from kilns in the neighbourhood of Peking, in the province of Shansi. According to the records, its manufacture in the latter district com- menced in the seventh century, but nothing is ac- curately known about the products of so remote a date. Not until the close of the Yuan, or opening years of the Ming, dynasty is there anything upon which a verdict may be founded, and even then the specimens are of comparatively insignificant charac- ter. A limited number of these are preserved in

Japan where they have always been higly valued, 247