Covered Jar or potiche. Painted in iron red and green enamels, with a family scene in a garden, and brocade borders of _ju-i_ pattern, peony scrolls, etc. Sixteenth century. Height 17½ inches. _Salting Collection_ (_Victoria and Albert Museum_).] But it is not necessary to multiply instances, for the type is well known, and must have survived for a long period. Indeed, many competent authorities assign the bulk of this kind of porcelain to the Yung Chêng period (1723–1735); and it is undoubtedly true that imitations of Wan Li polychrome were made at this time, for they are specifically mentioned in the Yung Chêng list of Imperial wares.[205] But I am inclined to think that the number of these late attributions has been exaggerated, and that they do not take sufficiently into account the interval of forty-two years between the reigns of Wan Li and K’ang Hsi. It was a distracted time when the potters must have depended largely upon their foreign trade in default of Imperial orders, and it is probable that much of this ware, characterised by strong, rather coarse make, greyish glaze and boldly executed decoration in the Wan Li colour scheme, belongs to this intermediate period. The vases usually have the flat unglazed base which characterises the blue and white of this time.[206] Two handsome beakers, with figure subjects and borders of the peach, pomegranate and citron, and a beautiful jar with phœnix beside a rock and flowering shrubs, in the British Museum, seem to belong to this period, but there are numerous other examples, many of which are coarse and crude, and obviously made wholesale for the export trade. Among the various examples of Wan Li polychrome exhibited at the Burlington Fine Arts Club in 1910, there was one which calls for special mention, a box[207] with panels of floral designs surrounded by fruit and diaper patterns in the usual colours of the _wu ts’ai_, with the addition of an overglaze blue enamel. It is true that this blue enamel was clearly of an experimental nature and far from successful, but its presence on this marked and indubitable Wan Li specimen is noteworthy. For it has long been an article of faith with collectors that this blue enamel does not antedate the Ch’ing dynasty, being, in fact, a characteristic feature of the K’ang Hsi _famille verte_ porcelain. The rule still remains an excellent one, and this solitary exception only serves to emphasise its general truth, showing as it does that so far the attempts at a blue enamel were a failure. But at the same time the discovery is a warning against a too rigid application of those useful rules of thumb, based on the generalisation from what must, after all, be a limited number of instances.