Some time, then, during the sixteenth century, whether before or after the accession of Wan-li (1572), the Chinese began to decorate the surface of their porcelain with jewel-like enamels _appliqués_ to the glaze. At first, apparently, these colours were confined to three: a copper green, a yellow generally of a buff tint, probably containing antimony as well as iron, and a purple derived from manganese. These are the _San-tsai_ or three colours of the Chinese writers, and it will be seen that they differ from the colour triad of our ‘painted glazes’ (painted, that is, on biscuit and reheated in the _demi grand feu_) in that the copper silicate is of a turquoise blue in the latter, and in the former of a full leafy green. The Chinese authorities further tell us that a second scheme of decoration was given by the _Wu-tsai_ or the five colours which were made up by the three already mentioned, with the addition of an opaque red derived from the sesqui-oxide of iron (otherwise known as hæmatite, bole or red ochre),[47] and finally of a cobalt blue, _sous couverte_, surviving as it were from the earlier blue and white ware, for, as we have mentioned, the use of the blue as an enamel over the glaze belongs to a later period. So much for the teaching of the Chinese books; but when, attacking the subject from the other side, we examine the specimens of enamelled ware which for one reason or another--the coarseness and thickness of the paste, the moulded form, and the irregular surface--we should be inclined to attribute to the Ming dynasty, we are led to classify these earlier examples somewhat as follows:-- 1. On a white ground a design, often, it would seem, of textile origin, roughly painted in an opaque red (like sealing-wax), with the addition of a leafy green and very rarely of a little yellow. This is a class of decoration much imitated in Japan at a later date, especially by the artist potters of Kioto and at Inuyama. 2. The same colours with the addition of blue, _sous couverte_. The design often takes the form of figures in a landscape, the whole broadly treated. The earliest type of the Imari ware (apart from the Kakiyemon) seems to be based on this scheme of decoration. Both these classes are distinguished by the white ground, the sparing use of yellow, and the almost complete absence of manganese purple and turquoise blue. 3. A transparent enamel of leafy green, yellow and manganese purple painted on in washes so as to cover the whole ground. When with these colours we find the outline drawn in black, we have the basis of a large part of the _famille verte_. On the other hand, it is this class of decoration which probably carries on the tradition of the early Ming ware, sometimes described as ‘enamelled,’ but more probably all of it painted on the biscuit and fired in the _demi grand feu_. In China it would seem that these enamelled wares [Illustration: _PLATE VII._ CHINESE]