Strange to say, the clobberer became an established institution, and he was at work in London in the last century, and maybe he is not yet extinct; and, stranger still, his wretched handiwork has been actually taken as a model for decoration in English potteries, even to the ridiculous travesties of Oriental marks which he often added as the last insult to the porcelain he had defaced. As a rule, the clobbered decoration occurs on blue and white and follows more or less the lines of the original, though it is at once betrayed by its clumsiness and the wretched quality of the enamels used. Occasionally the clobberer was more ambitious, as on a bottle in the British Museum decorated with three spirited monsters in underglaze red. Into this admirably spaced design the clobberer has inserted graceless trees and three ridiculous figures in classical dress standing in Jack-the-giant-killer attitudes with brandished swords over the Chinese creatures. The effect is laughable, but it was vandal’s work to deal in this way with choice K’ang Hsi porcelain. CHAPTER XV NINETEENTH CENTURY PORCELAINS _Chia Ch’ing_ [chch 2] (1796–1820) There is little to distinguish the porcelain of this reign from that of Ch’ien Lung. The old traditions were followed and the high standard of technical skill was maintained to a great extent, though in the absence of original ideas the natural tendency was towards a gradual decline. The blue and white is a mere echo of the Ch’ien Lung blue and white, as is shown by a square jar in the Franks Collection, which bears the date corresponding to 1819. Another dated specimen in the same collection is a little bowl with design of the “Eight Ambassadors of the Tribes of Man” mounted on strange beasts, painted in thin garish blue under a bubbly glaze. There are well-finished monochromes of the Ch’ien Lung type, conspicuous among which is an intense brick red (derived from iron), which has all the depth and solidity of a glaze. The enamelled wares are in no way inferior to their late Ch’ien Lung models, and the medallion bowls with engraved enamel grounds are particularly choice. Plate 132, a richly decorated vase belonging to the Lady Wantage, illustrates a type common to both periods. The design of ladies of the harem in an Imperial pleasure ground is carefully painted in mixed colours and enclosed by rich borders of dark ruby pink enamel, brocaded with polychrome floral scrolls. Another vase in the same collection (marked Chia Ch’ing) has a movable inner lining and pierced outer shell richly enamelled in the same style. The blue green enamel of the Ch’ien Lung porcelain was freely used to finish off the base and mouth of the vases of this time.