3. The mixed-work, a combination of the two classes.
The first is generally used in ornamenting the interior of the basements of the houses. The natural bright yellow tint of the bamboo is either left, or it is lacquered in variegated colours to heighten the effect of the patterns.
The lattice-work is used for door and window-frames. In the latter case the holes are filled up with transparent shells, coloured paper, or painted glass, which has been in use since 3000 B.C.
The mixed-work runs along the walls, forming a frieze of gilt metal or alabaster. The last-named material is employed in summer-houses as a finish to the outer space, connecting bright red or light blue columns. When thus used the effect is undoubtedly charming. The roofs are tinted dark green, an unconscious reminiscence of by-gone times, when they were made of the leafy branches of trees or the broad foliage of plants. The dark azure of heaven shining through the perforated trellis-work, contrasting with the white marble of the substructure and the red columns, forms a combination both striking and agreeable. The upper parts of a building appear to swim in the air.
The brick walls of the Chinese are bare of stucco; the void predominating. They use the walls either as enclosures for court-yards, as isolated protecting walls before the entrances of houses—reminding us of the gates of India or the propylæa of Egypt—as substructures, or as enclosures and partitions for dwelling-places. All these walls are constructed of air-dried, fire-baked, or glazed tiles and bricks. The latter are only used for temples or imperial buildings. Whilst we possess a Board of Public Works that unfortunately has no administrative power, and cannot prevent our thoroughfares from being constructed according to the principles of a most inveterate symmetrophobia (hatred of all order, shape, style, and homo-geneousness), the law in China goes so far as to regulate even the use of building material, not according to any esthetical rule, but pandering merely to rank and class interest. White marble may only be used for imperial substructures, the enclosure of imperial courts, and in the construction of imperial bridges, and must never be used as wall-decoration. Their cement for coating walls is like ours; the stucco flat coloured, and the colours mixed with the plaster before laying on. According to his station in the State, the owner of a house may surround it with a wall of clay or lime, or with one of air-dried or fire-baked bricks. Only the walls of princes may have stone plinths. The encircling walls of imperial palaces have a roof of bright yellow, and light-green glazed tiles. The Tshao-Pings, or protecting walls, placed before the entrance doors of houses, like screens before our fire-places, have large protruding plinths. They differ in colour according to the rank of the owner. Generally they are white, with painted ornamentation. Before the houses or palaces of princes the colours are red with gold, and the covering green or yellow. Before Miaos, temples of honour, they are nearly always of bright yellow. The outer walls are mostly white, decorated with incrusted landscapes or other conventional decorations. The inner walls are red and richly ornamented with gold; they have a kind of frieze ornamented with trellis-work, so as apparently to detach the support from the supported roof. In the houses of the higher classes the walls are decorated with damask, and in those of the commoners with paper-hangings, which latter we have adopted. Drapery is also freely used, hanging down and serving to divide the interior spaces of the houses. Doors and windows are still formed of curtains, as in the primitive times of civilisation in Assyria, India, and Babylon.
We are all acquainted with the excellence of Chinese silk-weaving, interspersed with golden threads, as also with the brightness and originality of some of their patterns, whenever they keep to an imitation of nature in their floral forms. They are generally, however, too realistic, the material not unfrequently appearing like a botanist’s herbarium, or like a collection of butterflies or stuffed birds. Their embroidery is not less old than their silk-weaving. As early as 2205 B.C. in their statistical records (numbering about 4,768 volumes) gold, silver, copper, ivory, precious stones—five sorts of pigments of mineral extraction—silk, hemp, cotton, weavings of these materials, and the feathers of all sorts of birds are mentioned. The woven stuffs are of one colour. Silk is either red, black, white, or yellowish, weaving in colours not being known. The frequent mention made of birds’ feathers may serve as a proof that they were used for embroidery, which in primitive times was more an ‘opus plumarium’ than embroidery proper, which is the forerunner of the art of painting. Feather crowns, kilts, and dresses are still in use amongst the savages of our own times. The colours are given by nature, and suit the grotesque taste of the undisciplined mind by their bright variegations and incongruities.
The oldest Chinese embroidery in colours was perfectly plastic. The plants, flowers, animals, and even figures, formed a polychromatic relief on the flat surface of the stuff. This style is still fashionable in China, though, instead of feathers, artificially coloured threads are used, always so as to make the objects appear raised from the surface. Even at present life-size figures in relief, or whole scenes, are executed with the needle in brightly-coloured silk threads. We are here involuntarily reminded of the reliefs of Nineveh, and we may assume that they are nothing but a transformation of embroidery into stone or alabaster.
The dresses, furniture, saddles, tea-pots, shoes and boots, jackets, covers, weapons, doors, and windows of the Chinese are all ornamented with patterns which have had their origin in this kind of relief-embroidery, traces of which are found even in their lacquered and keramic products.
The roofs of their houses are curved and drawn up like their features; they are copies of lids of baskets, tea-caddies, urns, or of caps and hats. The protruding parts are richly ornamented with dragons. The dragon with the Chinese is the prototype out of which man developed; the dragon is therefore the symbol of the imperial power.
Whilst the Chinese are altogether deficient in painting, because they have no idea of perspective or shading, they certainly excel in the technical treatment of keramic works of art, especially in the paste, which they make of kaolin, a decomposed feldspathic granite. The forms of their genuine pottery are most primitive in outline; dishes, cups, plates, and bowls are cylindrically shaped, as are their bottles and jars. Our South Kensington Museum abounds in specimens illustrating this.
Sharp naturalism and an exact reproduction of the forms of nature, without any skill in the conventional treatment of flowers, creepers, leaves, stems, fruits, and animals, prevail in all Chinese and Japanese works. The artist, if he intends to work in the Chinese style, must divest himself of all considerations for the higher esthetical principles of art; he must stoop to the tastes and delights of children, must study thoroughly their every-day customs and manners, enter into their mode of thinking, try to make the quaint quainter, and the grotesque still more grotesque. A big sun with thick rays in a corner to the right; some sharply-drawn trees in the middle; a bridge up in the clouds with a dog running over it; some children with large heads playing to the left; a bright stream marked with rough waves, through which fishes are peeping; the whole excellently finished so far as the lacquered work goes—and a Chinese tray is complete. The coloured enamel on keramic works, and their lacquered or varnished ware, notwithstanding their unimaginative naturalism and monstrously fantastic delineation, surpass anything we are capable of producing in the West of Europe. Their magnificent folding-screens, trays, tubs, wash-hand basins, toilet-cases, work-tables, perfume-cases, frames for looking-glasses; their jewel-tables—full of little drawers, secret nooks and corners, puzzling openings, and hidden shuttings—are so many additional proofs of their childish nature. They use the fret, which they have in common with the Mexicans, Peruvians, and Greeks. Whilst, however, the latter arrived at a continuous system of fret ornamentation, the Chinese still use it mostly fragmentarily, either one link after the other, or one above the other, without forming a continuous ornament.
We see in the Chinese one of the most interesting phenomena in the history of mankind, whether we look upon them from a social, religious, or artistic point of view. They govern their State on paternal principle, and on the grand rule, ‘Do to another what you would he should do unto you, and do not unto another what you would not should be done unto you. Thou only needest this law alone; it is the foundation of all the rest’ (Confucius in the sixth century B.C.), and yet they have made no progress in sciences and arts. The paternal government and home-rule check