TOY DOGS IN CHINESE ART 



ample fund of allegories and similes upon which he freely 

 draws, and it is to this custom that we owe most reproductions 

 of Pekingese dogs. When the Chinese scholar wished to fit 

 some particular word into a well-turned pictorial phrase, he 

 found keen delight in perversely substituting an object which, 

 by the sound of its name, or by the Chinese character, would 

 delicately suggest the wish of the sender without reducing it 

 to the bluntness of bald prose. If his wish referred to a 

 word sounding like " lion," the cultured men of Peking 

 would be apt, especially if he were favouring one of the 

 " fancy," to picture a member of the small breed of lion-like 

 dogs which give his native city a certain degree of fame. 

 The commonest form of token-presents in connexion with 

 Pekingese porcelains was, at the beginning of the nineteenth 

 century, that of the snuff-bottle. The illustrations always 

 have a distinct meaning, and are usually the pictorial repre- 

 sentation of some timely couplet or well-turned lucky phrase. 

 The picture-phrases must be apt allusions and also have 

 literary merit. Some of them can be construed as standing 

 for two or three separate good wishes. They often introduce 

 lucky numbers. A common snuff-bottle illustration, which 

 has an European parallel, is a picture of three magpies the 

 Chinese name for magpie signifies joy-bird on a tree with 

 the sun shining overhead. The wish is " One day three joys " 

 (" Yi Tien San Hsi "), such as official rank and a first-born 

 son to a proud father on his own birthday. Unfortunately 

 these snuff-bottles were carried in the pockets of their owners, 

 so that authentic specimens have often lost the freshness of 

 their illustrations through wear of the enamel. The phrases 

 most frequently found illustrated are as follows : 



1 Huan Tien Hsi Ti." 

 (" Love Heaven Joy Earth.") 



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