A History and Description of Chinese Porcelain |
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bamboo band beautiful birds blanc de Chine blossoms blue and white blue ground border Bottle Bowl brilliant brocaded brown Burlington Fine Arts Bushell Collection catalogue céladon centre Ceramic Art Ch'êng-hua Ch'ien-lung Ch'ing character Chia-ching China Chinese porcelain Ching-tê-chên chrysanthemum clouds cobalt collector copper cover crackled cups date marks decoration delicate Diam diaper double ring dragons eggshell eight Immortals emblem Emperor enamel colours engraved famille rose famille verte figures flanged floral Franks Collection glaze green Hsüan-tê imitated imperial inside jade K'ang-hsi period kiln Kylin landscape leaf Lent longevity lotus flowers Louis Huth medallions Ming Dynasty Ming porcelain Museum neck nien chih ornament over-glaze pæony painted in blue Pair panels pattern peach Peking pieces PLATE pottery prunus purple reign relief Salting Collection sang-de-boeuf Saucer Dish scrolls specimens sprays Sung symbols Taoist Thompson Collection Ting tint turquoise vase vitreous enamels Wan-li ware yellow Yuan Dynasty Yung-chêng
Popular passages
Page 7 - I HAVE an almost feminine partiality for old china. When I go to see any great house, I inquire for the chinacloset, and next for the picture gallery. I cannot defend the order of preference, but by saying, that we have all some taste or other, of too ancient a date to admit of our remembering distinctly that it was an acquired one. I can call to mind the first play, and the first exhibition, that I...
Page 7 - ... remembering distinctly that it was an acquired one. I can call to mind the first play and the first exhibition that I was taken to ; but I am not conscious of a time when china jars and saucers were introduced into my imagination. I had no repugnance then (why should I now have?) to those little, lawless, azure-tinctured grotesques, that under the notion of men and women float about, uncircumscribed by any element, in that world before perspective — a china tea-cup.
Page 38 - And bird-like poise on balanced wing Above the town of King-te-tching, A burning town, or seeming so, Three thousand furnaces that glow Incessantly, and fill the air With smoke uprising, gyre on gyre, And painted by the lurid glare, Of jets and flashes of red fire.
Page 154 - While a magistrate of the district of Teh-hwa he is said to have encountered Han Chung-le among the recesses of the Lu Shan, from whom he learnt the mysteries of alchemy and of the elixir of immortality. He was exposed to a series of temptations, ten in number, and having overcome them, was invested with a sword of supernatural power, with which he traversed the empire, slaying dragons and ridding the earth of divers kinds of evil for upwards of 400 years. His emblem is a sword (keen).
Page 158 - Very early legends narrated that this bird made its appearance as a presage of the advent of virtuous rulers, whose presence it also graced as an emblem of their auspicious government. One writer describes it as having the head of a pheasant, the beak of a swallow, the neck of a tortoise and the outward semblance of a dragon ; to which another version adds the tail of a fish ; but in pictorial representations it is usually delineated as a...
Page 154 - Kuo-lao (?g^^), 7th and 8th century AD, a recluse who had supernatural powers of magic, such as rendering himself invisible, etc. He used to be accompanied by a white mule, which carried him immense distances, and, when not required, was folded up and put away in his wallet ; when he wished to resume his travels he squirted some water upon the wallet and the beast at once appeared ; he generally rode the animal backwards. His emblem is the...
Page 60 - ... coarse and compact, the vases were thick and heavy, some were of a rice white, others pale blue. They used to take some Hoa-chi (steatite), powder it, and mix it with the glaze. The vases exhibited cracks running in every direction as though broken into a thousand pieces. The cracks were rubbed over with Indian ink or a red colour, and the superfluity removed. Then was seen a network of charming veins, red or black, imitating the cracks of ice. There were also vases on which blue flowers were...
Page 154 - Stated to have been the daughter of Ho Tai, of Tseng-cheng, near Canton. She used to indulge in solitary wanderings among the hills; and, rejecting the ordinary food of mortals, ate the powder of mother-of-pearl, which was supposed to produce immortality. She was summoned to the court of the Empress Wu (AD 690-705), but on her way disappeared. She carries in her hand a lotus flower (leen-hwa), which forms her emblem
Page 158 - The compound of the ivio,fmg-huang, is the generic designation usually employed for the bird, and is frequently translated "phoenix." One writer describes it as having the head of a pheasant, the beak of a swallow, the neck of a tortoise, and the outward semblance of a dragon, to which another version adds the tail of...
Page 153 - Sien, or eight immortals, are legendary beings of the Taoist sect, said to have lived at various times and attained immortality. They are not unfrequently depicted on porcelain. They are also to be found as separate figures, standing or seated. Sometimes they ornament the edges of plates, standing on various animals among the waves of the sea, and their symbols occasionally occur as devices.