It will be observed that in the muffle-stove the fine aubergine purple that we noted in the class last described is rarely to be obtained from manganese. In all cases the white ground is only left sparingly as a reserve for the petals of flowers and for the faces. In addition to these colours--the green, the yellow, and the purple--which are for the most part used as washes, a dark brown or black is largely employed for outlining the details of the decoration, as well as for tempering the colour of the background by covering it with scrolls and spirals. When this decoration is applied to the small moulded pieces--the _magots_, for instance, so admired by the French collectors of the eighteenth century--we have a class of objects to which the descriptions (in the Bushell manuscript and elsewhere) of the decorated ware of the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries would seem to apply. As we have seen, it is at the least very doubtful whether these early pieces were decorated _over the glaze_, but in a general view it cannot fail to strike one that the Kang-he decoration, in which washes of colour[59] play so important a part, belongs to an earlier school than that of the Wan-li porcelain, with its designs and medallions scattered over a white ground. These last patterns are, it would seem, derived from textile fabrics, from the rich brocades of the time, both Chinese and, possibly, foreign. In the _famille verte_ of Kang-he’s time, on the other hand, we may perhaps see a return, in general effect at least, to the _san-tsai_ and _wu-tsai_ painted glazes of earlier Ming time. When in place of the wash of green (or may be of yellow) the background is formed by a black enamel, we still feel the prevailing influence of the green in the decoration, so that these black-ground vases are rightly included in the _famille verte_. The black background itself is often of a greenish quality, and in the designs the camellia-leaf green is predominant; yellow and purple are but sparingly introduced, but the effect is heightened by the white reserves (PL. X.). In many cases a wash of green appears to have been carried over the black ground. This green enamel may be often seen overlapping, as it were, on the foot of a vase. It would be difficult to find in the whole range of Chinese porcelain anything more superbly decorative [Illustration: _PLATE X_ CHINESE]