KERAMIC STUDIO 
SOME CHINESE CONVENTIONALIZATIONS 
A. G. Marshall. 
EFORE Aubrey Bcardsley, was John Chinaman. 
He, in the distant centuries ago, without any 
theory as to the mission of decorative art or 
thought of revolutionizing its practice, hit 
upon some "ideas," which in late times have 
been by occidental people the subject of amuse- 
ment, ridicule, neglect, oblivion, re-discovery, 
"original invention," enthusiasm, fad. The Chinese decorator 
looked upon all objects as legitimate material for his craft — 
all was fish that came into his net, but he did not, like modern 
decorative gourmands, swallow his fish au nature/, whole and 
unseasoned. With the truest decorative instinct, the innate 
sense of what would look well and be fitting to the purpose 
intended, he selected his solid meat, rejecting all superfluous 
externals and internals, both the scales and fins of naturalism 
and the soulful insides of sentimental idealism. Without 
exactly realizing it, he invented motifs on which he rung the 
changes and recurrences as deftly as they go in a Wagner 
opera. Compared with classical western conventions his dec- 
orative verse may not always rhyme, but when its language is 
understood it is found to have amazingly good sense. 
It has long been known that the innocence of perspective 
and eccentricities of anatomy discernible in Celestial decora- 
tion are not the result of childish inability to see or to draw. 
It was the critics who could neither see what true decoration 
meant nor draw a correct inference from precious examples. 
Now the newest school, not alone in decoration, but in picto- 
rial art as well, is deriving its very life from Chinese and 
Japanese modes of seeing. After several thousands of years 
this is a sweet revenge for the almond-eyed. Their empire 
may be going to potsherds, but their ideas have set out to 
conquer the world. 
It has been said that Chinese art, architectural and 
graphic, has never risen in conception above a dish. Perhaps 
this is the reason for the superlative perfection of their won- 
derful dishes, of the secrets of whose fabrication the most 
miraculous stories were once believed in Europe. 
The Chinese pottery painter never fell into the error of 
copying natural phenomena upon his wares. His instinct 
taught him too much respect both for nature and for his 
marvellous enamels to permit the degradation of the one and 
the ruination of the other in that manner. In his eyes a pot 
was a pot, a vehicle for liquids, but not for instruction in 
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