On the other hand, in the annals of the Sui dynasty (581-617) we are told that China had long lost the art of making glass, but that a high official of the court succeeded at that time in fashioning vessels of green porcelain that could not be distinguished from _liu-li_ (Bushell, _Chinese Ceramic Art_, p. 20). The inference that we must draw from these contradictory statements is probably that, in spite of many assertions to the contrary,[272] the art of glass-making was never thoroughly acclimatised in China till much later times. And this conclusion is confirmed by the total absence in our collections of any examples of glass of native manufacture that can be referred to a date earlier than the eighteenth century.[273] For although we know that after the return of Marco Polo both the Venetians and Genoese found in China a market for their beads, if not for more important objects of glass, and that early in the fifteenth century specimens of Saracenic enamelled glass found their way to the Chinese ports, the evidence that any true glass was at that time made in China is of the vaguest character.[274] When we come to the eighteenth century we are on firmer ground. Before the end of the seventeenth century glass-works had been established under the superintendence of the Jesuit missionaries, within the precincts of the Imperial Palace at Pekin. At a later time, not long after the accession of Kien-lung (1735-1795), we hear of a famous glass-worker, one Hu.[275] This Hu was a craftsman in the Imperial glass-works, and there made both ‘a clear glass of greenish tint with an embossed decoration executed in coloured glass, and an opaque white glass which was either engraved with etched designs or decorated in colours’ (Bushell, _Oriental Ceramic Art_, p. 400). It is a significant fact that though the emperor much admired the glass of Hu, his first thought was to have it imitated in porcelain, the more noble material. Let us now turn to the specimens of Chinese glass that we find in our museums. What is probably the largest and most representative collection in Europe is now in the Museum of Industrial Art at Berlin. Here are more than four hundred examples brought together by the care of Herr von Brandt, formerly German minister at Pekin.[276] Smaller but representative collections of Chinese glass may be seen both at South Kensington and in the British Museum.