There is little to guide us to the dating of these wares, and marks are exceptional.[190] There is, however, a flower pot in the British Museum with white design of _ch’i-lin_ on a brown ground which has the late Ming mark _yü t’ang chia ch’i_[191]; and a specimen with an Elizabethan metal mount was exhibited at the Burlington Fine Arts Club in 1910.[192] These are, no doubt, of Ching-tê Chên make; but there is a curious specimen in the British Museum which seems to be of provincial manufacture. It is a dish with slaty blue ground and plant designs with curious feathery foliage traced with considerable delicacy. The border of running floral scroll has the flowers outlined in dots, and the whole execution of the piece is as distinctive as the strange coarse base which shows a brown-red biscuit and heavy accretions of sand and grit at the foot rim. The same base and the same peculiarities of design appeared on a similar dish with celadon glaze exhibited by Mrs. Halsey at the Burlington Fine Arts Club in 1910,[193] and in the British Museum there are other dishes clearly of the same make, but with (1) crackled grey white glaze and coarsely painted blue decoration, and (2) with greenish white glaze and enamelled designs in iron red and the Ming blue green. It is clear that we have to deal here with the productions of one factory, and though we have no direct clue to its identity, it certainly catered for the export trade to India and the islands; for the enamelled dishes of this type have been found in Sumatra. Mrs. Halsey’s dish came from India, and fragments of the blue and enamelled types were found in the ruins of the palace at Bijapur,[194] which was destroyed by Aurungzebe in 1686. Probably the factory was situated in Fukien or Kuangtung, where it would be in direct touch with the southern export trade, and the style of the existing specimens points to the late Ming as the period of its activity. The process of marbling or “graining” has been tried by potters all the world over, and the Chinese were no exceptions. The effect is produced either by slips of two or more coloured clays worked about on the surface, or by blending layers of clays in two or more colours (usually brown and white) in the actual body. Early examples of this marbling occur among the T’ang wares, and Mr. Eumorfopoulos has examples of the Ming and later periods. One of these, a figure with finely crackled buff glaze and passages of brown and white marbling in front and on the back, has an incised inscription, stating that it was modelled by Ch’ên Wên-ching in the year 1597.[195]