"Here also is made another species that I had never yet seen: it is all pierced and cut-work: in the centre is a cup to contain liquor. The cup is in the same piece and forms a part of the cut-work. I have seen other porcelains in which Chinese and Tartar ladies were painted to the life. The draperies, the complexion and features of the faces were all well rendered. From a distance you would take this work for enamel.

"The Chinese complain of a lost secret: they once had the art of painting on the insides of porcelains fishes and animals that only became visible when the vessels were filled with some liquid. They try from time to time to recover the art of this magic painting, but in vain. . . . However that may be, we may say that at the present day the beautiful blue has been revived on porcelain after having disappeared from it. . . .

"The Chinese chiefly succeed in grotesques and the representations of animals. They make ducks and turtles that float upon the water. I have seen a cat painted to the life. In its head had been put a little lamp the flame of which shone through the eyes, and I was assured that rats were terrified at it. They also make here many statues of Kouan in, a Chinese goddess, with an infant in her arms.

"European merchants often order from the Chinese workers porcelain plaques to form the top of a table, or back of a chair, or frame of a picture. These works are impossible: the greatest length and width of a plate is about one foot. If they are made larger than that, no matter how thick, they bend. . . . The history of King te ching speaks of divers works ordered by Emperors that workmen tried vainly to execute. . . . The Mandarins of this province presented a petition to the Emperor begging him to have the attempts cease. . . . However, the Mandarins who know how ingenious Europeans are in invention, have sometimes asked me Dutch and Flemish Furniture to have new and curious designs sent from Europe in order to have something singular made for presentation to the Emperor. On the other hand, the Christians strongly urged me not to procure such models, for the Mandarins are not so readily satisfied as our merchants are when the workmen tell them that a work is impracticable; and frequently the bastinado is liberally bestowed before the Mandarin abandons a design from which he has promised himself great advantages.

"We should not be astonished that porcelain is so dear in Europe: we shall be still less so when we learn that besides the great profits taken by the European merchants and by their Chinese agents, it is rarely that a baking is entirely successful; sometimes indeed it is a total failure. Thus for one workman who grows rich, there are a hundred ruined; but this does not deter them from tempting Fortune. . . . Moreover, the porcelain that is sent to Europe is almost always made on new and often strange models in which success is difficult. However slight the blemishes may be it is rejected by the Europeans, who will not take any but perfect pieces; so that it remains in the hands of the workmen, who are not able to sell it to the Chinese because it is not to their taste. The consequence is that the pieces that are taken bear the additional charge of those that are rejected.

"According to the history of King te ching, the profits were formerly much greater than they are now. It is hard to believe this, for there must then have been a great sale of porcelain in Europe. I have said that the difficulty in executing certain models sent from Europe is one of the causes of the excessive price of porcelain, for it must not be imagined that the workmen can work on all the models that reach them from foreign countries. There are some impracticable ones in China, just as there are some made that astonish foreigners who would not think them possible."

The price of china-ware fluctuated considerably during the seventeenth century. Sometimes a critic complained, as above, that values had greatly appreciated because of the demand, and then again others wailed that the enormous importations had driven prices down till the game was not worth the candle. In Mendelslo's Voyages (1639), we read:

"The Chinese bring to the island of Java porcelain which they sell there very cheaply: for when boats arrive from China they buy six porcelain dishes for a thousand caxas (a string of two hundred caxas are called sata and are worth about nine deniers of French money, and five satas tied together make a sapocori)."

Again, from Recueil des Voyages (Constant) we learn:

"The (Chinese) ships also bring (to Java) fine and coarse porcelain. When the Dutch first arrived, they bought five or six dishes of both kinds for 1,000 caxas, but afterwards they got no more than two or three, rarely more.

"For return freight, they take, besides pepper, all the lacca brought from the city of Tolonbaon, where there is great abundance. They also load with the anil 1 that comes from Anier in pots; sandal wood, musk and tortoise-shell, with which in China they make beautifully wrought coffres; elephant tusks, with which they make beautiful seats that are esteemed as much as if they were of silver, and that are used by Mandarins and Viceroys."

1 A species of indigo.

The importations were indeed enormous, as the bills of lading of the Dutch vessels prove. For example, among the cargoes of eleven Dutch ships that arrived in Holland from the East Indies in July, 1664, were 44,943 pieces of very rare Japanese porcelain and 101 Japan cabinets. The eleven ships that left Batavia on December 24 of the same year, brought home 16,580 pieces of porcelain of divers kinds.

The Dutch brought to Europe such vast quantities of porcelain in the first quarter of the seventeenth century as practically to monopolize the trade and undersell the English. Thus, Methwold, writing from Masulipatam to the East India Company in 1619, says: "The great profit first obtained on porcelain has filled all men's hands with plenty (by the Dutch), which makes theirs (the East India Company's) not sought after."