CERAMIC ART IN CHINA. 357 



" Combronware " was applied in England after 1623 to porcelains 

 brought from China to that port on the Persian Gulf, and purchased 

 there for shipment home by the factory of the India Compan}- before 

 it extended its operations to China (when these products came to be 

 termed " China ware"), or in the same manner that "Indian China" 

 is applied in America to porcelain shipped from Canton, and with as 

 much reason. 



Indeed, M. du Sartel, in accord with most other writers on the sub- 

 ject, maintains that no true porcelain was produced in Persia at all, 

 and that the designation of such ware Tchini not only means that the 

 earliest specimens and mode of manufacture were of Chinese origin, 

 but that they one and all actually came from China. The Persians, it 

 is true, manufactured a kind of ware which has been designated " Per- 

 sian porcelain,"' but it was of so soft a nature that it could be not only 

 scratched, but actually cut, with a knife, and was entirely distinct 

 from hard, kaolinic porcelain. The supplies of the latter were, M. du 

 Sartel maintains, derived entirely from China, to which countr}^ mod- 

 els, shapes, and special kinds of ornamentation were sent for repro- 

 duction, a custom which sufficiently explains the presence of a Persian 

 name, or the v^ord fovna'iche ('' by order"), written in Arabic charac- 

 ters, upon porcelain of undoubtedl}^ Chinese origin. 



This opinion requires, I apprehend, further investigation prior to its 

 acceptance as fact. It is, however, recorded that Shah Abbas I, a great 

 patron of all the arts, about the 3^ear 1600 invited a number of Chinese 

 potters to establish themselves at Ispahan for the sake of introducing 

 improvements in the manufacture of porcelain. Though several new 

 methods were adopted, and though a new style of decoration, half 

 Chinese, half Persian, was largely used for a long period after the arri- 

 val of these potters, it is generally admitted that no hard porcelain 

 resembling that of China was even then produced in Persia. And one 

 can not help l>eing struck by the strong similarity, amounting practi- 

 cally to identity, l)etween the vases contained in the cases devoted to 

 so-called Persian porcelain in the Dresden collection and certain other 

 vases in the same collection which are classed as Chinese. 



CHINESE AND EUROPEAN SYSTEMS OF MANUFACTURE COMPARED. 



Whatever the variety- of the Chinese porcelain was which constituted 

 so important a factor in this early Arab trade, and whatever the date 

 at which it made its first appearance in Europe, specimens of it had, 

 prior to the beginning of the second half of the seventeenth centuiy, 

 found a place in the collections of princes alone. About that time, 

 however, Chinese porcelain became more generalh' known, and the 

 fine quality of the glaze, its transparency, and the brilliant style of its 

 decoration excited universal admiration. Strenuous efi'orts were at 

 once made on all sides to discover the secret of its manufacture, but 



