It is the blue and white that we are above all accustomed to associate with the Ming period. But this is not the Chinese point of view. If we consult the Bushell manuscript (see chap. v.) we find that Tzu-ching, towards the end of the sixteenth century, had in his collection thirty-nine pieces which he attributed to the reigning dynasty, but of these only five or six would be classed by us as ‘blue and white’; at least equal importance was given to those decorated with copper-red under the glaze, and even more specimens belong to the class of painted glazes. These latter are chiefly little objects--pen-rests, rouge-pots, and small wine-jars moulded to represent plant and animal forms, the gourd or again the persimmon being great favourites. We must not confuse these early specimens, dating mostly from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, with the somewhat similar objects so much sought after by the French collectors in the eighteenth century, which belong for the most part to the contemporary _famille verte_; on these the decoration is given for the most part by enamels _painted over the glaze_. Still it is from some of these little _magots_ that we can perhaps form the best idea of the coloured porcelain so prized by Tzu-ching, but of which we are unable to point to any specimens in our collections. In connection with these painted glazes--for it undoubtedly belongs to this class--it may be well to say something of a very decorative ware of which the origin is probably to be placed in early Ming times. The colours are distinctly those of the _demi grand feu_, and in this ware we have the earliest instance of the use of these colours. This porcelain occurs most frequently in the shape of vases of baluster outline with contracted necks and small mouths, or sometimes of the more ordinary oil-jar shape, with wide mouths. We may distinguish two types of this ware. In the first the decoration is given by means of a low relief of beads and of ribs surrounding countersunk _cloisons_. The field between these _cloisons_ is of a deep blue passing into a blue-black, and the _cloisons_ themselves are filled with a wash of turquoise or straw-yellow. Chains of pearls in festoon surround the neck, and from these hang _pendeloques_ of various Buddhist emblems. On the body of these vases the decoration often consists of lotus-plants arising from conventional waves.[40] In the second type the turquoise blue predominates, an impure pale manganese is added, and the jars are often built up of an open-work trellis of bars. Both the turquoise and aubergine purple porcelain of the Kang-he period, as well as the Japanese Kishiu ware, may possibly be traced back to a Ming porcelain of this class. There are specimens of all these wares in the British Museum and at South Kensington. In the Salting collection is a jar of the _cloisonné_ type, the blue-black ground covered with a skin of thin glaze of a dull surface. This jar was formerly the property of a