0-1279) that modern pieces are
often confounded with the more precious productions of that epoch. One
of the first lessons to be learnt by the student of Chinese pottery is
that, with great reverence for their own antiquities, the Chinese of
every period have endeavoured to reproduce the famous wares of their
ancestors, and often with such skill as to deceive the most expert.
Even when the manufacture of porcelain was at its highest in
King-te-chen, the potters in other parts of China carried on the
production of glazed or unglazed pottery in coloured clays, and,
further, the directors of the imperial factory from time to time
strove to reproduce the most archaic wares that could be found in the
Empire.

[Illustration: PLATE VII

Chinese. Sang de Boeuf.

Chinese. Flambe.

Chinese. Turquoise glaze "crackled."

Purple Souffle.

Coral red.

Peach blow. Pigeon's blood.

Lemon yellow.

Apple green.]

_Porcelain._--By this word we distinguish broadly all those pieces of
pottery in which the body of the ware is vitrified and translucent, and
also, broadly speaking, in which the material is white throughout,
unless minute quantities of metallic oxides have been definitely added
to colour it. It is impossible to draw any hard and fast line between
porcelain and stoneware, for both may be thoroughly vitrified and
translucent in thin pieces--but generally the stonewares are drab, red
or brown in the colour of the fired clay, and they seldom exhibit the
precious quality of translucence. If the body of a piece of pottery is
not even vitrified, however hard it may be, it is terra-cotta or
earthenware. The Chinese, accustomed from a very early period to fire
their pottery to a high temperature, produced vitrified stonewares
before any other nation. Moreover, they glazed these stonewares with
fusible mineral substances, and from that stage the natural refinements
of methods must necessarily have produced porcelain. In regions where
beds of primary clay were found, the body of the ware would burn whiter
than elsewhere, and a mixture of limestone or marble with the felspathic
rock would give a glaze of greater purity and brilliance and one that
was more readily fusible and Would spread better over the whole piece.
How many centuries were needed before a ware white enough and
translucent enough to be now classed as porcelain was produced we cannot
know; but the process was certainly one