Tê-hua porcelain is, in fact, a fine white, highly vitrified material, as a rule very translucent and covered with a soft-looking, mellow glaze which blends so intimately with the body that they seem to be part and parcel of one another. The glaze varies in tone from ivory or cream white to the colour of skim milk, and its texture may be aptly described by the homely comparison with blancmange. When the ivory colour is suffused by a faint rosy tinge, it is specially prized; but I can find no reason for supposing that the cream white and milk white tints represent different periods of the ware. On the contrary, there is good evidence to show that they were made concurrently. As the ware is with few exceptions plain white or white decorated with incised, impressed, moulded, or applied ornaments of a rather formal and often archaic character, there will always be a difficulty in determining the date of the finer specimens, viz. whether they are Ming or early Ch’ing. The nature of the ware itself is a most uncertain guide, for one of the most beautiful examples of the material which I have seen is a figure of a European soldier which cannot be older than 1650. I need hardly say that owners of Fukien porcelain, particularly of the figures, habitually give themselves the benefit of this ever present doubt, and that these pieces are usually listed in sale catalogues as Ming or early Ming according to taste. This attitude is fundamentally illogical, for the ware is still made at the present day, and the Ming specimens in modern collections are likely to be the exception, and not, as optimistic owners would lead one to suppose, the rule. But in any case it will be more convenient to deal with the ware as a whole in the present chapter than to attempt the difficult task of treating its different periods separately, even though the bulk of our examples belong to the Ch’ing dynasty.