260 Porcelain and Earthenware. 



durability and beauty. The surface of this elegant material is fin- 

 ished with a glazing made of burnt alum — silex — and an alkali ob- 

 tained from calcined lime and fern ashes; or with hoache which is 



* 



a very white magnescian earth combined with pure silex. 



u At King-te-ching, a district in the province of Kingsi, there are 

 500 manufactories, which give employment to more than a million of 

 artisans." This will not seem incredible when it is considered, that 

 such is the division of labor, that sixty hands are employed in com- 

 pleting a single piece. 



Petuntse and Kaolin those celebrated materials for porcelain which 

 are unrivalled and perhaps unequalled in other countries, are found 

 in immense quarries of great depth, within twenty or thirty leauges of 

 King-te-ching. Genuine Kaolin is totally infusible in the tremendous 

 beat of the Chinese furnace, which easily melts the solid granite. 

 The constituent parts of Kaolin are silex 52* alumine 42* oxide of iron 

 0-33. The quarries of Alencon and St. Yrieux in France approxi- 

 mate nearly to the Kaolin of China. f The colors and decorations 

 upon the best Chinese porcelain pre very superb, but the paintings 

 are inferior in design to the European. J 



The porcelain tower at Nanking is an astonishing monument of 

 the durability of this unparalleled manufacture. It is of an octagonal 

 shape consisting of nine stories, three hundred feet high, and is cov- 

 ered over its whole surface with the choicest porcelain. This beauti- 

 ful edifice has withstood the elements, and the changes of seasons 

 for four hundred years, without alteration or injury. 



The Dresden China approaches nearest to the oriental, and in 

 some respects excels all other European porcelains, resisting the pow- 

 er of heat with greater obstinacy than any other. In compactness of 

 texture, and infusibility, it is second only to the Chinese. It is not 

 equally white with the best French, but is very splendid in its gilding, 

 and painting, especially in miniature heads, and battle scenes, and 

 generally in the taste and elegance of its forms. 



The Sevres royal establishment near Paris, surpasses, perhaps, 

 even the Chinese, in the snowy whiteness of the ware, with the 



* Steatite, or soapstone — see Lardner's Cyclopedia, article earthenware, &c. 

 Steatite is much used by the porcelain manufacturers at Worcester, &c. in England, 

 tee Parkes. 



1 Lardner's Cyclopedia. 



t The Chinese make inferior wares also, and by some it is said, the best is never 

 suffered to go out of the Empire. 



