PORCELAIN DECORATED
such pieces as chefs-d'œuvre. They were manufactured in the Ming dynasty as well as in the Kang-hsi period, for among the items of the imperial requisition of the Wan-li 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-tê-chên factories during the Kang-hsi 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 Kai-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 decorative 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 Kai-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 recognises 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-hsi 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 Kai-pien-yao, but they have the practical advantages 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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