CHINA
PORCELAFNIDECORATED
such pieces as chefs-d’wuvre. They were manufac- tured in the Ming dynasty as well as in the Kang-hsi period, for among the items of the imperial requisition of the Wan-/i reign the following is found —
Tea-dippers with white flowers on blue ground, and white dragons coiling through the flowers of the four seasons.
At the Ching-té-chén factories during the Kang- Asi and two succeeding eras there was produced a porcelain which may be classed mid-way between the ordinary hard-paste ware and the soft-paste Kaz- pien-yao. It possesses all the fine qualities of the latter, thinness of biscuit, milky whiteness of glaze, brilliancy of blue colour and artistic delicacy of deco- rative design. But it is without crackle, and the absence of this feature certainly deprives it of the peculiar wax-like aspect that adds so much to the charms of the Kaz-pien-yao. This variety of blue-and-white porcelain is not specially distinguished by name in China, but it takes a high place in the esteem of Chinese connoisseurs. The collector rec- ognises it easily by its lightness, thinness and the pure white of its body, this last feature constituting the chief distinction between it and hard-paste egg-shell porcelain.
Undoubtedly the Kang-Asi hard-paste porcelains, considered from the point of view of decorative effect, deserve the favour they have found with Western collectors. They belong to a grade of technical and artistic achievement below that of the Kaz-pien-yao, but they have the practical advan- tages of being procurable in incomparably greater numbers at less cost and of much more imposing size. Moreover, it appears to be as far beyond the
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