Catalogue of a Collection of Oriental Porcelain and Pottery Lent for Exhibition by A.W. Franks: Bethnal Green Branch Museum

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G.E. Eyre & W. Spottiswoode, 1876 - Porcelain, Asian - 124 pages
 

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Page xv - Polo, travelling in 1280, visited one of the sites of the porcelain manufacture, and mentions that it was exported all over the world. It is probable that he may have been the means of calling the attention of his countrymen to this production of the far East. Many other notices from travellers of the 14th and loth centuries might be cited. It was probably through Egypt that it reached Europe ; at any rate a present of porcelain vases was sent by the Sultan of Egypt in 1487 to Lorenzo de
Page 6 - Among these simple colours the first place must be assigned to the bluish or sea-green tint, termed by the French celadon. It is probably of considerable antiquity, and it is remarkable that the earliest specimen of porcelain that can now be referred to as having been brought to England before the Reformation, viz., the cup of Archbishop Warham, at New College, Oxford, is of this kind. By the Persians and Turks it is termed mertebani, and it is much valued by them as a detector of poisonous food....
Page xiii - It is probably to this reign that we may refer most of the old specimens of Chinese porcelain that are to be seen in collections, even when they bear earlier dates.
Page 123 - ... combinations of broken and entire lines, each differently placed. The entire lines represent the male, strong, or celestial element in nature, and the broken, the female, weak, or terrestrial. Each group has its own name, and even the dishes at a feast are arranged in accordance with these diagrams. They are said to have been first published by Fuh-hi, the legendary founder of the Chinese polity, who is stated to have lived BC 2852 to 2738, and to whom they were revealed by a dragon-horse. By...
Page 108 - OF DATE. The Chinese have two modes of indicating a date : — 1st, by a cycle of sixty years ; 2dly, by the Nien-hao or name given to the reign of an emperor, or "to a portion of such reign. 1. CYCLICAL DATES. The cycle of sixty years is indicated by two words, the first derived from the tea signs termed " stems," the other from twelve others termed
Page x - Hwaug-ti, who is stated to have commenced his reign of a hundred years in 2697 BC A subsequent Emperor Yu-ti-shun (2255 BC) is stated to have himself made pottery before he ascended the throne. This must have been simple pottery, possibly glazed ; but we have no precise information as to the kind manufactured.
Page 89 - has on one hand been attributed to Japan, it has on the other, and by a still more singular hallucination, been ascribed to Lowestoft in England. There can be no doubt that there was a considerable manufactory of porcelain at Lowestoft, but this was of the usual English soft paste. The evidence of hard paste having been made there is of the most unsatisfactory kind ; chiefly the indistinct recollection of persons not acquainted with the difference between hard and soft paste. A few specimens of...
Page 22 - have evolved plainly [their meaning] a scholar's feast is spread, " and, sitting amid the flowers, we pass the goblet quickly, and " drink till we are drunken. When the moon is not in its splendour " how can one expatiate on it in ecstasy ? But if the verses are not " perfect we are fined the customary gold and the embarrassing " wine." INK APPARATUS. Chinese porcelain, painted in blue. It consists of an oblong slab for rubbing Indian ink, with a hole at one end for water ; over this fits a loose...
Page xv - Chinese plates illustrating the processes. Porcelain in China is usually formed of two materials, the one termed in Chinese Pe-tun-tse is a white fusible material, a mixture of felspar and quartz, obtained from a pounded rock by repeated washing, and formed into cakes or bricks, whence its Chinese name "white clay bricks.
Page 12 - Sung dynasty (AD 960-1270), are noticed as beiug crackled. The productions of the two brothers Chang, who lived under that dynasty, were distinguished by one being crackled and the other not. Crackled vases were called Tsui-khi-yao, under the southern Sung dynasty (1127-1279), and are thus described in the History of King-te-chin: — "The clay employed was 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...

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