Introduction of Glazes into China 135 



Hitherto the attempt has been made to extract the realities from 

 the ancient traditions, and to interpret them without prejudice. It 

 is more difficult to correctly judge the legendary ingredients by which 

 they are incrusted, as we are unaware of the lore of the Orient which 

 prompted such notions as are echoed in Pliny. An analogous field, 

 however, might contribute a little to aid us in understanding some of 

 this folk-lore. Nothing could better enlighten Pliny's account of 

 murrines than a remembrance of the first experience which Europe had 

 in regard to the newly-introduced Chinese porcelain. If the ancients 

 were deeply impressed and perplexed by the thickly glazed faience of 

 the anterior Orient, and may have mistaken it for stone, an interesting 

 parallel is offered by the fact that in the inventory of the Duke of 

 Anjou (1360-68) is found "une escuelle d'une pierre appele"e pour- 

 cellaine," and, in that of Queen Jeanne d'Evreux (1372), "un pot a 

 eau de pierre de pourcelaine." 1 In these two cases, Chinese porcelain 

 (corresponding to that of the Yuan period, 1260-1367) is styled "a 

 stone called porcelain." 



The beliefs of the ancients in an underground substance from 

 which the murrine vessels were made, receive a curious parallel from 

 the fantastic notions entertained by early European writers as to 

 the composition of Chinese porcelain. Barbosa 2 wrote about 1516, 

 "They make in this country a great quantity of porcelains of different 

 sorts, very fine and good, which form for them a great article of trade 

 for all parts, and they make them in this way. They take the shells 

 of sea-snails, and egg-shells, and pound them, and with other ingre- 

 dients make a paste, which they put underground to refine for the 

 space of eighty or a hundred years, and this mass of paste they leave 

 as a fortune to their children." In 161 5, Bacon said, "If we had in 

 England beds of porcelain such as they have in China, which porcelain 

 is a kind of plaster buried in the earth and by length of time con- 

 gealed and glazed into that substance; this were an artificial mine, 

 and part of that substance" ... Sir Thomas Browne, in his 

 "Vulgar Errors" (1650), asserted, "We are not thoroughly resolved 

 concerning Porcellane or China dishes, that according to common 

 belief they are made of earth, which lieth in preparation about an 

 hundred years underground; for the relations thereof are not only 

 divers but contrary; and Authors agree not herein" . . . These 

 fables were refuted at the end of the sixteenth and seventeenth cen- 

 turies by travellers who had occasion to make observations on the 



1 F. Brinkley, Japan and China, Vol. IX, Keramic Art, p. 371 (London, 1904). 

 1 Yule and Burnell, Hobson-Jobson, p. 726. 



