X MISCELLANEOUS Chinese Metal-Work Japanese Basket-Work Seventeenth-Century Keys Artistic Door Knockers Echoes of the Napoleonic Wars German War Cartoons War Relics CHAPTER X MISCELLANEOUS Chinese Metal-Work-Japanese Basket-Work Seventeenth-Century Keys-Artistic Door IT is difficult to know where to begin and where to end with Chinese art. It is illimitable. With the exception of glass the Chinese have excelled in all the other arts, and excelled in such a manner as to make European replicas in comparison seem very poor echoes or shadows. In painting one must step aside, we hold to Raphael and to Andrea del Sarto, to Titian and to Velasquez, and to all the successive generations of painters as representing a Western civilization. But in the realm of pure artistry, of symbolic representation of life, of the creation of individual types, in original genius untrammelled by race, East or West, Chinese art still stands supreme. Chippendale, although he says nothing in his volumes of his indebtedness, borrowed a considerable number of Chinese designs. The eighteenth century from its furniture to its porcelain was Chinese, whether in England or in Holland. We owe, and it is a debt we should acknowledge, a good deal of what we enjoy artistically to China. Dr. Johnson drank his Chinese beverage from Chinese or copies of Chinese porcelain, but one may search his volumes through with their sonorous latinity and find no gratitude expressed to the Chinese. Chinese Metal-Work.-There is something to wonder at in the old Chinese bells and in metalwork of a grandiose nature such as sacrificial wine vases, and incense burners, all of bronze. There are, however, small articles of everyday use which commend themselves to the Western collector on account of their peculiar beauty. In examining the art of the Chinese, even when found on common objects, it must not be forgotten that nothing is written in design without some definite meaning. The so-called "hawthorn" jars with plum blossoms on a gossamer geometric network, signify the cracking of the ice on the rivers, and the advent of spring. An old race such as the Chinese have courtly customs centuries old. To send such a jar as a gift is to convey greetings for a bright future. Similarly on the lady's brass clasp, for her cloak, or it may have been some sedate mandarin's, there are clearly shown the Buddhist signs, termed "the eight emblems of Happy Augury." They can be traced on the clasp illustrated (p. 419). In the centre |