CHINA
CHI N/A
“ Famille Rose,’ and their designs, even when copied directly from Chinese subjects, presented some feature that betrayed European origin. But they were un- doubtedly fine porcelains of their class, and as Chinese year-periods or other marks were often added, a source of some confusion arose for the amateur. M. du Sartel has paid much attention to this branch of the subject. In his interesting work “ La Porce- laine de Chine’”’ he offers advice which well deserves to be remembered : —
Arm yourselves, collectors of the future, with salutary and absolute distrust. Let your first care be, in every case, to clean the porcelain with a slightly acid solution in order to remove the dirt accumulated by the action either of time or of an unscrupulous hand. If the specimen is really old, this precaution will cause the enamels to resume all their pristine brilliancy, will unveil to you the cracks, the imper- fections, the repairs craftily concealed by unfired decoration. How many specimens, and that two of the finest character, will you not then recognise as having had surface decoration applied to them by a second firing: blue grounds, uniform or mottled, enriched with designs in gold, or with reserved medallions enclosing polychromatic flowers, without count- ing vases the entire surface of which, originally white, is now red, green, or black ?
Then study the specimen closely, and you will see that the additions are badly adapted to the original design; that they cross each other and cover certain parts clumsily, and that the added fields of colour encroach upon the ancient contours. The stalks and the delicate strokes have lost their clearness, or are partially obscured by the ground colour. The painter charged with the task of applying these coloured grounds, or of filling the vacant spaces with flowers and new subjects, skilled though he may have been, has not been able to prevent these secondary colours from spreading during the stoving, and in places overrunning the less fusible Chinese enamels. An intimate union of the two
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