Page:Brinkley - China - Volume 1.djvu/84

 The term céladon was derived from the name of the hero of a novel—d'Urfé's L'Astrée—a courtier in rustic dress, who, in the seventeenth century, represented to Frenchmen the type of an amorous shepherd. On the stage this character was always clad in green, relieved by tints of blue or grey, and when specimens of Chinese Ju-yao, Kuan-yao, and Lung-chuan-yao began to come into French collections, the colour of the ware was identified with that of the shepherd's clothes. But long before Europe knew anything of such ware, large quantities of it had found their way to Arabia, Persia, Egypt, Morocco, the East Coast of Africa, Japan, India, Borneo, Ceram, and other places. The majority of such pieces were, of course, the more solid and heavier productions of the Chinese factories, and it is probably to their durable qualities, as much as to the esteem in which they were held, that they owed their preservation through long centuries. Their large numbers and the wide area throughout which they are found has suggested to some writers the idea that China alone must not be credited with their manufacture. Professor Karabacek, of Vienna, is foremost among these theorists. In the writings of Hâdschi Chalfa, a celebrated encyclopedist, who died in 1658, the Vienna savant found a passage to the effect that the precious, magnificent céladon dishes and other vessels seen in the seventeenth century were manufactured and exported at Martabân in Pegu." M. Jacquemart had already suggested a similar belief. Speaking of Persian Keramics, he wrote:—

Céladons are very common in Persia; they have the beautiful sea-green tint of the old Chinese céladons, and are to be recognised only by their style. Some are simply gadrooned