PORCELAIN DECORATED
haps, has greater interest or importance for foreign collectors than "blue-and-white." It deserves specially careful notice. Summing up what has already been stated, the result is that, as an artistic product, the manufacture commenced under the Ming dynasty (1368-1644). The earliest examples, dating from the Sung and Yuan eras, are inferior in respect of pâte and colour alike. Disfigured by discontinuities or blisters in the glaze, clumsily finished, rudely painted, the blue of impure tone without either brilliancy or depth, and the decorative designs formal if not archaic—the painter’s range of conception not extending beyond scroll patterns, clumsy figure-subjects, and diapers—the ware was evidently destined for common purposes of household life. As an object of art it could not possibly rank with the Ting-yao, the Kuan-yao, the Chün-yao, the Yuan-tsü, or any of their celebrated contemporaries. The potter, in short, saw no inducement to expend strength upon a manufacture that gave so little promise. What chiefly deterred him is said by some authorities to have been the want of a good pigment. They suppose that the cobalt used by the first manufacturers of blue-and-white was of native origin, and that, though it was not incapable of producing a rich colour, the difficulty of refining it exceeded the skill of the time. According to this theory, the arrival of a purer mineral from abroad, in the form of tribute, at the beginning of the fifteenth century, first directed really expert attention to decoration with blue under the glaze. But the "Annals of the Sung Dynasty," quoted by Dr. Bushell, speak of the "Arabs bringing to China, in the tenth century, among other presents for the emperor, pieces of cobalt blue (Wu-ming-yi),
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