But the most frequent task given to these Canton enamellers was the reproduction of elaborate coats of arms upon the centre of a plate or dish, or sometimes upon a whole dinner-service. There is in the British Museum a remarkable collection of this armorial china, brought together for the most part by the late Sir A. W. Franks.[105] Orders came not from England alone, but from Holland, Sweden, Germany, and even Russia. Services were thus decorated for Frederick the Great and other royal heads. The practice seems to have been kept up during the whole of the eighteenth century, but we do not know the precise date at which it was introduced. In a few cases--the large Talbot plate in the British Museum is an instance (PL. XXI.)--the arms were painted in blue under the glaze, and such decoration was probably executed at King-te-chen. The small plate with the Okeover arms in the same collection was, according to the family tradition, ordered as early as the year 1700, but the decoration in my opinion would undoubtedly point to a later date[106] (PL. XII. 2).
[Illustration: _PLATE XXI._ CHINESE, BLUE AND WHITE WARE]
It is hardly necessary at the present day to mention that this armorial china has nothing to do with Lowestoft. A fictitious interest was, however, long given to this ware by its strange attribution to that town.
Much Chinese porcelain, either plain white or sparely decorated under the glaze with blue, was imported during the eighteenth century, to be daubed over, often in the worst taste, with a profusion of gaudy colours, in Holland, in Germany, and in England. At Venice, too, the plain Oriental ware was at one time elaborately painted with a black enamel.
More interest attaches to the porcelain enamelled at Canton for the Indian market. The Chinese seem in some way to have associated the _yang-tsai_ or ‘foreign colours’ with the enamels made in the south of India, especially at Calicut, and it is possible that Indian patterns and schemes of colour may have influenced some of the developments of the _famille rose_. The Canton enamellers must at the same time have been working on the richly decorated ware for the Siamese market, but it is on their enamel paintings on copper that the Indo-Siamese influence is chiefly seen (see next chapter).