It was used indifferently as a simple monochrome or as a ground in which panel decoration was reserved, the panels painted in _famille_ _verte_ enamels or in blue and white; and in both cases the blue surface was usually embellished with light traceries in gold. Plate 110 illustrates both types. Both are highly prized by collectors, and change hands at high prices when of the good quality which is usual on the K’ang Hsi specimens. We have already noted[334] the occasional decoration of the powder blue ground with designs in _famille verte_ enamels, and Père d’Entrecolles[335] records another process of ornamentation which was applied to all the blue grounds of this group, viz. the washed, the sponged, and the powder blues: “There are workmen who trace designs with the point of a long needle on this blue whether _soufflé_ or otherwise; the needle removes as many little specks of dry blue as are necessary to form the design; then the glaze is put on.” From this precise description it is easy to recognise this simple but effective decoration. There are two examples in the British Museum with dragon designs etched in this fashion, the one in a washed blue, and the other in a sponged blue ground. The pattern appears in white outline where the blue has been removed by the needle and the porcelain body exposed. Long usage has given sanction to the term “mazarine blue.” It was applied to the dark blue ground colour of eighteenth century English porcelain, and in the contemporary catalogues the name “mazareen” was given to any kind of deep blue from the mottled violet of Chelsea to the powdery _gros bleu_ of Worcester. In reference to Chinese porcelain it is used to-day with similar freedom for the _ta ch’ing_ or dark sky blue and for the powder blue. Assuming that the phrase derives from the famous Cardinal Mazarin, it cannot in its original sense have had any reference to powder blue, for the Cardinal died in 1661, and, if he had a weakness for blue monochrome, it must have been for some variety of the _chiao ch’ing_ or blue glazes proper which were current at the end of the Ming and the beginning of the Ch’ing dynasties. At the present day it is impossible to guess the true shade of mazarine blue, and we must be content to regard it as a phrase connoting a deep blue monochrome the exact definition of which has gone beyond recall.[336] The K’ang Hsi mark is sometimes found on porcelain coated with a very dark purplish blue glaze with soft looking surface and minute crackle. It is apparently one of those glazes which are fired in the temperate parts of the kiln, and its use is more frequent on porcelains of a slightly later period.