Ebook Chinese Porcelain

The illustrated manuscript catalogue reproduced in the following pages, the work of a celebrated Chinese connoisseur of the sixteenth century of our era, came into my possession more than twenty years ago. The original, bound in the ordinary Chinese fashion in four volumes between rosewood boards, was shown at the time to the Peking Oriental Society, and excited much interest. It was described in a paper read before the Society,l and subsequently prepared for publication and brought to England for the purpose. But the valuable Chinese album, together with my own poor notes on the subject, was burned up in the disastrous fire at Whiteley's Repository in 1887. It only remains for me to state, in a few words, how, by a happy chance, the loss has not been altogether irretrievable. The album, before it was brought to my notice, had been taken to His Excellency M. Von Brandt, a well-known authority on Far Eastern subjects, who was then German Minister at Peking. Recognizing its importance as a document in the history of Chinese ceramic art, Herr von Brandt, although he declined to buy it outright, commissioned a Chinese artist named Li Teng-yuan to make a careful copy of it. The said Chinese artist, a protege of the Lazarist Fathers at Peking, made at the same time a duplicate copy for his own use, with illustrations and text complete, and has since, doubtless, executed many another for European and American collectors, as well as for his native clientele. I was fortunate in being able to secure from him the present copy on my return to Peking, which was executed, as the artist notes in the preface (p. In the 1sth year (a. D. 1888) of the reigning emperor Kuang Hsu. My friend Captain F. Brinkley must also have acquired a copy from the same source, to supply eleven of the coloured illustrations to his learned disquisition on the 'keramic art of Our clever and versatile Chinese artist is the author, as well, of most of the quaint illustrations in Monseigneur A. Pavier's attractive work on Peking,3 several of which he has evidently culled, although unacknowledged, from the old porcelain album.