GREEN GLAZES.--The peculiar tint of green, in varied intensity, that distinguishes the _famille verte_ is seldom found as a single glaze; and of the green Lang yao, made by Lang Ting-tso in the early part of the reign of Kang-he, it is doubtful whether we have any representatives in our European collections. This glaze is said to be somewhat in the style of his more famous _sang de bœuf_.
The brilliant cucumber or apple-green of Ming times is shown in a pair of exquisite little bowls in the British Museum. Over the green glaze there is a scroll pattern of gold, and on the inside a blue decoration under the glaze. Almost identical with these is the bowl set in a silver-gilt mounting of English make dating from about the year 1540, now preserved in the Gold Room (PL. V.). Of a similar but somewhat deeper tint of green are the rare crackle vases, generally of small size, of which there are specimens in the British Museum and in the Salting collection.[90]
OLIVE AND BRONZE GLAZES.--The monochrome glazes of various shades of olive and bronze are for the most part produced by a _soufflé_ process, in which on a base of one colour a second colour is sprinkled. Thus to form the ‘tea-dust’ a green glaze is blown over a reddish ground derived from iron. The wonderful bronze glazes, of which there are good specimens in the British Museum and in the Salting collection, are produced in a similar way. But some of these (and the same may be said of the ‘iron rusts‘) partake rather of the nature of the more elaborated glazes of the _flambé_ class.
RED AND FLAMBÉ GLAZES (PL. XVII.).--We have left the red glazes to the last, both from the complicated nature of the class and because one variety, the _sang de bœuf_, forms a transition to the ‘splashed’ or _flambé_ division. A red glaze or enamel, we have seen, can be produced from three metals,--from gold, from copper, and from iron. With the _Rose d’or_, which may be classed as a monochrome enamel, when used to cover the backs of plates and bowls, we are not concerned here--it is not properly a glaze in our sense of the word. The red derived from the sesqui-oxide of iron was only successfully applied as a monochrome when, at a late period, the difficulties attending its use were overcome by combining the pigment with an alkaline flux. This is the _Mo-hung_ or ‘painted red’ of the muffle-stove, which was painted over the already glazed ware, and therefore not properly itself a glaze. In fine specimens it approaches to a vermilion colour; it is the jujube red of the Chinese. It is with this colour, laid upon the elaborately modelled paste, that the carved cinnabar lacquer is so wonderfully imitated.[91]