[46] Note that cobalt as an enamel colour was not applied on porcelain during Ming times. [47] There is, however, a curious old bowl in the Salting collection with the nien-hao of Cheng-te (1505-21), on which a design of iron red, two shades of green, a brownish purple, _and a cobalt blue of poor lavender tint, all these colours over the glaze_, is combined with an _underglaze_ decoration of fish, in a full _copper red_. Note also the early use of a cobalt blue enamel, _sur couverte_, in the Kakiyemon ware of Japan. [48] Much of this kind was translated by Julien, and a good summary may be found in Hippisley’s paper contributed to the Smithsonian Institute, but the information from the same and other sources is more accurately translated and critically analysed in the seventh and eighth chapters of Dr. Bushell’s great work. [49] Yung-lo, according to the Chinese reckoning, did not commence his reign until the new year’s day following the death of his predecessor (1403). I have, however, thought it better to adopt the European method of reckoning dates. [50] The name _Sentoku_ that they give to it is the Japanese reading of the characters forming this emperor’s name. [51] We may mention that a pair of wide-mouthed vases of this ware, shown at the Burlington Fine Arts Club in 1896, bore the nien-hao of Kia-tsing (1521-66) inscribed round the mouth. [52] More properly a _fresh name was given to the period_, but for the sake of brevity we here as elsewhere identify the emperor’s name with that given to the nien-hao. [53] The Trenchard bowls, mentioned below, belong probably to this or to the following reign. [54] But this name is also applied by some to the older Su-ma-li blue. [55] Perhaps the earliest nien-hao on a piece of blue and white in which we can place any confidence. [56] A predecessor of his as viceroy and superintendent at King-te-chen was _Lang Ting-tso_, from whom the famous Lang yao, the _sang de bœuf_, had its name, though this derivation is not absolutely certain. It could only have been quite in the last days of the latter viceroy’s rule that much good work was turned out from the kilns. [57] It will be observed that the turquoise blue and the green, both derived from copper, so happily combined in the wall-tiles of the Saracenic East, are in China rarely found united in the decoration of the same piece, and this arises from practical difficulties connected with the fluxes and the firing. At least the two colours are never _successfully_ combined, for the attempt was apparently made in Ming times, and of this some instances are given in the following note. Indeed I should be inclined to regard such a combination on any piece as an evidence of early, probably of Ming, origin.