The export trade with Western Asia was in full swing in the reign of Wan Li, and the Portuguese traders had already made their way to the Far East and brought back Chinese porcelain for European use. That it was, however, still a rare material in England seems to be indicated by the sumptuous silver-gilt mounts in which stray specimens were enshrined. Several of these mounted specimens still exist, and seven of them were seen at the Burlington Fine Arts Exhibition, 1910,[173] the date of the mounts being about 1580–1590. Taken, as they may fairly be, as typical specimens, they show on the whole a porcelain of indifferent quality, with all the defects and virtues of export ware--the summary finish of skilful potters who worked with good material but for an uncritical public, and rapid, bold draughtsmanship in an ordinary quality of blue usually of greyish or indigo tint. The most finished specimen was a bowl from the Pierpont Morgan Collection, with a design of phœnixes and lotus scrolls finely drawn in blue of good quality. Unlike the others, it had a reign mark (that of Wan Li), and probably it was made at the Imperial factory. A bottle mounted as a ewer from the same collection had a scale pattern on the neck, flowering plants and birds on the body, and a saucer dish was painted in the centre with a typical late Ming landscape, with mountains, pine trees, pagoda, a pleasure boat, and sundry figures. The blue of this last piece was of fair quality but rather dull, and it had a double ring under the base void of mark. Another bowl had on the exterior panel designs with deer in white reserved in a blue ground, in a style somewhat similar to that of the bottle illustrated on Plate 76, Fig. 3. There is a bowl in the British Museum, mounted with silver-gilt foot and winged caryatid handles of about 1580 (Plate 69, Fig. 1). The porcelain is of fine white material with thick lustrous glaze of slightly bluish tint and “pinholed” here and there; and the design painted in blue with a faint tinge of indigo consists of a vase with a lotus flower and a lotus leaf and three egrets, in a medallion inside and four times repeated on the exterior. This is clearly an early Wan Li specimen, if, indeed, it is not actually as old as Chia Ching.