A SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF CERAMIC ART IX CHINA, 



WITH A CATALOGUE OF THE HIPFISLEY COLLECTION 



OF CHINESE PORCELAINS/ 



By Alfred E. Hippisley, 

 Comviissioner of the Imperial Maritime Customs Service of China. 



For such' information as we possess regarding the history of the 

 ceramic art in China, we have till recently' been chiefl}' indebted to the 

 labors of the famous French sinologue. M. Stanislas Julien, who, under 

 the title of L'Histoire et la Fabrication do la Porcelaine Chinoise, 

 translated, and published in 1856, the History of the Manufactory of 

 Chingte-chen (a small town in Kiangsi province, but for centuries the 

 most important seat of the Chinese porcelain industry), a work written 

 by a local magistrate in 1815 from older documents, and to the valua- 

 ble letters from the same town written in 1712 and 1722 by the Jesuit 

 missionary Pere d'Entrecolles, the priest in charge there, which have 

 been published in the collection of Lettres editiantes et curieuses. 

 Within the past three j^ears, however, very valuable additional light 

 has been shed upon this subject ])y the labors of two gentlemen who are 

 at once collectors and Chinese scholars, S. W. Bushell, M. D., physician 

 to H. B. M. legation, Pekin, and F. Hirth, Ph. D., a member of the 

 imperial maritime customs service of China. Doctor Bushell has been 

 fortunate enough to secure from among the dispersed library of the 

 Prince of I the manuscript of a descriptive catalogue (of which native 

 experts see no reason to doubt the authenticity), with illustrations painted 

 in water-color, of eighty-two celebrat(^d specimens of old porcelain seen 

 in the collections of noted connoisseurs or possessed b}^ the author him- 

 self, one Hsiang Yiian-p'ien (styled Tzu-ching), a native of Tsui-li, an 



^ In 1887 Mr. A. E. Hippisley, a rommissiouer of the imijerial maritime customs 

 service of China, deposited in the U. 8. National Museum a large and important col- 

 lection of Chinese porcelains, with the understanding that the Museum should print 

 a descriptive catalogue, which it did in the Annual Report for 1887-88. The edition 

 of this catalogue having long ago been exhausted, and the demand for it having 

 recently increased, owing to the current interest in all matters relating to China, it 

 is now republished with emendations and with the addition of a number of plates 

 illusti'ating type examples from the various provinces represented. 



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