An interesting series of this last-mentioned type is exhibited in the British Museum along with a number of bronzes similarly ornamented. Many of these are of early date, and five of the porcelains bear the Chêng Tê mark and unquestionably belong to that period. These comprise a pair of vases with spherical tops which are hollow and pierced with five holes, in form resembling the peculiar Chinese hat stands; the lower part of a cut-down vase, square in form; an ink slab with cover, and a brush rest in the form of a conventional range of hills. The body in each case is a beautiful white material, though thickly constructed, and the glaze, which is thick and of a faint greenish tinge, has in three of these five pieces been affected by some accident of the firing, which has left its surface dull and shrivelled in places like wrinkled skin.[94] The designs are similar throughout--medallions with Arabic writing surrounded by formal lotus scrolls or cloud-scroll designs, strongly outlined and filled in with thin uneven washes of a beautiful soft Mohammedan blue. The glaze being thick and bubbly gives the brush strokes a hazy outline, and the blue shows that tendency to run in the firing which we are told was a peculiarity of the Mohammedan blue if not sufficiently diluted with the native mineral cobalt. The inscriptions are mainly pious Moslem texts, but on the cover of the ink slab is the appropriate legend, “Strive for excellence in penmanship, for it is one of the keys of livelihood,” and on the brush rest is the Persian word _Khāma-dān_ (pen rest). In the same case are three cylindrical vases, apparently brush pots, decorated in the same style but unmarked. One has dark Mohammedan blue and probably belongs to the next reign. The other two, I venture to think, are earlier. They are both of the same type of ware, a fine white material, which takes a brownish red tinge in the exposed parts, and the glaze, which is thick and of a soft greenish tint, has a tendency to scale off at the edges. The bases are unglazed and show the marks of a circular support. The larger piece is remarkably thick in the wall, and has a light but vivid blue of the Mohammedan sort; the smaller piece is not quite so stoutly proportioned, but the blue is peculiarly soft, deep, and beautiful, though it has run badly into the glaze, and where it has run it has changed to a dark indigo.[95] One would say that this is the Mohammedan blue, almost pure; and if, as I have suggested, these two specimens are earlier types, they can only belong to the Hsüan Tê period. Another blue and white example with Chêng Tê mark in the British Museum is of thinner make and finer grain; but, as it is a saucer-dish, this refinement was only to be expected. It is painted in a fine bold style, worthy of the best Ming traditions, with dragons in lotus scrolls, but the blue is duller and greyer in tone than on the pieces just described.