As to the history of the factories, it is expressly stated in the _T’ao lu_ that they were started in the Ming dynasty. No account need be taken of the few legendary specimens to which tradition assigns an earlier origin than this, such as the so-called flute of Yoshitsune, a twelfth-century hero of Japan, and the incense burner in St. Mark’s, Venice, which is reputed to have been brought from China by Marco Polo. The latter is of the same model as Fig. 3 of Plate 87, perhaps from the same mould, and I have seen at least half a dozen others in London. A third piece which was long regarded as a document is the jewelled white plate in the Dresden collection, supposed to have been brought back from Syria by a Crusader in the twelfth century. The story is no doubt apocryphal, but in any case it has no real bearing on the question, for the plate is not Fukien ware but a specimen of white Ching-tê Chên porcelain with a “shop mark” in underglaze blue. It has been set with jewels in India or Persia, like a sixteenth-century bowl in the British Museum, but the “Crusader plate” is probably a century later. Brinkley[254] asserts, without giving any authority, that the Tê-hua industry was virtually discontinued at the end of the eighteenth century, and revived in recent years. The latter part of the statement is unquestionably true, for we have the eye-witness of a missionary[255] who visited the place about 1880 and describes the manufactory as the most extensive of its kind in Fukien--“pottery, pottery everywhere, in the fields, in the streets, in the shops. In the open air children are painting the cups. Each artist paints with his own colour and his own few strokes, whether a leaf, a tree, a man’s dress or beard, and passes it over to his neighbour, who in turn applies his brush to paint what is his share in the decoration.” Unfortunately there is no reason to suppose that the writer made his observations with an expert eye which would make a distinction between pottery and porcelain, but in any case it is certain that he found a vast ceramic industry in full blast at Tê-hua. With reference to the modern ware Brinkley says[256]: “A considerable number of specimens are now produced and palmed off upon unwary collectors. But the amateur can easily avoid such deceptions if he remembers that in genuine pieces of ivory white the ware is always translucid when held up to the light, a property which, if not entirely absent, is only possessed in a comparatively slight degree by the modern product. The general quality of the glaze and the technique of a piece should be sufficient guides, but if any doubt remains an examination of the base of the specimens will probably dispel it. In the old ware the bottom of a vase or bowl, though carefully finished, is left uncovered, whereas the modern potter is fond of hiding his inferior pâte by roughly overspreading it with a coat of glaze.”