The wider borders are usually borrowed from brocade patterns with geometrical or floral ornament, broken by three or four oblong panels containing symbols or sprays of flowers; and when a similar scheme is followed in some of the narrow edgings, the flowers are unhesitatingly cut in half, as though the pattern were just a thin strip taken from a piece of brocade. A few special borders have been described on the pages dealing with armorial porcelain,[527] among which were the well-known “rat and vine” or “vine and squirrel” pattern (see Plate 119, Fig. 3), reputed to have first appeared on a picture by the Sung artist, Ming Yüan-chang.[528] A rare border formed of red bats side by side occurs on a few plates of fine porcelain which are usually assigned to the K’ang Hsi period, but are probably much later. On the whole, the Chinese border patterns are comparatively few in number, being in fact a small selection of well-tried designs admirably suited to fill the spaces required and to occupy the positions assigned to them on the different porcelain forms. As to the sources from which these and the other designs described in this chapter were borrowed by the porcelain decorator, we can only speak in general terms. Ancient bronze vessels, metal mirrors, carved jades, stamped cakes of ink, embroideries, brocades, handkerchiefs, and illustrated books no doubt provided the greater part of them. The purely pictorial subjects would be based on the paintings in silk and paper which the Chinese arrange in four chief categories: (1) figures (_jên wu_),(2) landscape (_shan shui_),(3) nature subjects (_hua niao_, lit. flowers and birds), and (4) miscellaneous designs (_tsa hua_). Selections of desirable designs from various sources were no doubt arranged in pattern books, and issued to the porcelain painters. CHAPTER XVIII FORGERIES AND IMITATIONS