A CATALOGUE OF THE HIPPISLEY COLLECTION OF CHINESE PORCELAINS; 

 WITH A SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF CERAMIC ART IN CHINA. 



By Alfred E. Hippisley. 



Note. — In 1887 Mr. A. E. Hippisley, of tlie Imperial Maritime Customs Service of 

 China, deposited in the National Museum a large and important collection of Chinese 

 porcelains, with the understanding that they should be allowed to remain on exhi- 

 bition for at least two years, and that the Museum should print a descriptive cat- 

 alogue. The catalogue, carefully prepared by "Mr. Hippisley, is now published, with 

 the hope that it will enable visitors to the Museum to study the collection with more 

 intelligent appreciation during the time it shall remain in the Museum. 



For such information as we possess regarding the history of the Cer- 

 amic Art in China, we have till recently been chiefly indebted to the 

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

 the title of "L'histoire et la fabrication de la Porcelaiue 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 maigistrate 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 edifiantes et curieuses." 

 Within the past three years, however, very valuable additional light 

 has been shed upon this subject by the labors of two gentlemen who are 

 at once collectors and Chinese scholars, S. W. Bushell, M. D., j)hysi- 

 cian to H. B. M. Legation, Pekin, and F. Hirth, PH. D., a member of 

 the Imperial Maritime Customs Service of China. Dr. Bushell has 

 been fortnnate enough to secure from among the dispersed library of 

 the Prince of I, the MS. of a descriptive catalogue (of which native ex- 

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

 in water color, of eighty-two celebrated specimens of old porcelain seen 

 in the collections of noted connoisseurs or possessed by the author him- 

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

 ancient name of Chia-ho, now Chiahsing-fu, in Chehkiaug province, who 

 was a celebrated collector of all kinds of antiquities during the latter 

 half of the sixteenth century. A translation of this work, with explan- 



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