CHINA
CHINA
itself, and were admitted to a place among the orna- ments of refined households. This last fact, attested by the Missionaries in China during the seventeenth century, confirms the hypothesis mentioned above that the Chinese Famille Chrysanthémo-Peonéenne bor- rowed much of its beauty from Japanese models. Toward the close of the era, that is to say, in the early years of the eighteenth century, decoration of this class underwent a marked change, the character- istics of which are well described by Mr. A. W. Franks as “a prevalence of half-tints and broken colours, together with the appearance of a beautiful ruby red derived from gold.’ Porcelains thus deco- rated constitute the Famille Rose of French con- noisseurs. M. Jacquemart, to whom this classification is due, falls into a serious error with regard to the antiquity of such ware. ‘An incontestible fact,’’ he writes (‘ Histoire de La Céramique,” pp. 77, 78), “‘is henceforth established, that during the Hung-chih period (1488-1515) the Chinese Famille Rose fur- nished cups of the most admirable pate on which birds, flowers, and insects were represented with the greatest perfection.’’ ‘This misconception is the more surprising inasmuch as the same writer notes that the porcelains sent to Europe by the Jesuit mission- aries during the reign of Kang-hsi and manufactured under their very eyes “ had nothing in common with even those pieces of the Famille Rose which are con- sidered least ancient.’’ Evidently it did not occur to the distinguished connoisseur that this absence of re- lationship to the Famille Rose on the part of porce- lains sent to Europe in the seventeenth century, might be attributed, not to the disuse of colours em- ployed during the two preceding centuries, but to the
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