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386
CHINESE
PORCELAIN.
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cream-colored specimens are rare and much
prized—these are seldom seen out of China.
The greens, light and dark, turquoise, and reds are generally finely glazed, and have the crackle lines small and minute. In coloring these ex
amples are exquisite, and in this respect they
i throw the finest spccimens'of European porcelain
k The green and turquoise
quite into the shade.
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crackle made in China at the present. day are very inferior to the old kinds. Perhaps the rarest and most expensive of all ancient crackles
is a yellowish stone-color. Of other ancient porcelain (not crackle) prized by the Chinese, we may mention the specimens
ANW’I»-~wv/N,I”WJ¢MI”-N,I
(generally vases) with a white ground, enameled with figures of various colors, as green, black,
Vase ot' Sea-green Crackle.
To begin with what is called old crackle porce lain by collectors. The Chinese have many kinds of this manufacture, some of which are extremely i
rare and beautiful.
In the whites and greys the i.
crackle is larger, and the older specimens are E
often bound by a metallic-looking band, which it sets off the specimens to great advantage. White and grey are the common colors amongst modern g
Ovit‘orm Bottle of rare Turquoise color.
and yellow. It is a curious fact that the attempts
crackle; but the latter is easily known from its 3 made at the present day by porcelain manufac inferiority to the more ancient. The yellow and turers to fix such colors invariably fail. '/~.r”/,1 a/r ~v/ II The self-colored specimens, such as pure whites, creams, crimsons, reds, blues, greens,
and v’iolets, are very fine, and much prized by Chinese collectors. But the most ancient examples of porcelain,
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are in the form of circular dishes with upright sides, very thick, strong, and heavy, and in variably having the marks of one, two, or three, on the bottom, written in this form, II, III_
2 The kinds most highly prized have a brownish~
s yellow ground, over which is thrown a light
shot sky-blue, with here and there a dash of
blood-red. The Chinese tell us these specimens
are more tlmn a thousand years old. A speci
t men shown by a Chinese merchant- in Canton
2
i
t
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Gourd-shaped Bottle of yellowish stone-color Crackle.
was valued at three hundred dollars! Within the last few years the attention of role lectors in this country and Europe has been
