CHINA
ITS HISTORY ARTS AND
LITERATURE
Chapter I
CHINESE PORCELAIN AND POTTERY
AS TO THE FIRST MANUFACTURE OF TRUE PORCELAIN IN CHINA
In former years France stood alone in her appreciation of Chinese keramic productions. By French amateurs only was properly understood the double triumph of æstheticism and technique achieved in the monochromatic vases of the Ching-tê-chên factories. In England, the popular idea of Chinese porcelain was a highly decorated, formally painted ware. So little valued were monochromatic or even blue-and-white pieces, that if any such found their way to London, they were deemed unsaleable until their surface had received pictorial additions at the hands of Anglo-Saxon potters. Such sacrileges are no longer perpetrated. All Western collectors have now learned to appreciate the incomparable beauty of the Kang-hsi and Chien-lung blues. These fine pieces, as well as their contemporaries of the monochromatic and polychromatic orders, derive additional value from the fact that, so far as human foresight can reach, the potters of the Middle King-
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