It is in enameling upon metal and in textile fabrics and embroidery that Chinese art as known to Europeans is most attractive. The enameling is done as the same work is done in Europe: the substance, a kind of soft glass, is ground tine, mixed with some visemis material, and applied with the brush to the surface to be covered. This, put into the enameling furnace, which is not of very great heat, fuses and then hardens completely, producing, as the decorative artist wishes. an opaque or a translucent super ficial adornment. The custom in China is to use what is known as the cloisonno method (see ExAmm.), and in carrying out the designs in this material the Chinese use strong and vivid colors to an extent much exceeding the practice of the Japanese or other Eastern nations. In fact, the Chinese are the greatest masters of chromatic effect in pure strong colo•—dark and light blue, Clark and bright red, green of two or three tints, dark yellow, light yellow. and the golden effect given by the metallic edge, which may be of brass or may be gilded—all these go to make up a color harmony which the workmen of no other nation succeed in so well as do the Chinese.
Somewhat the same merit is seen in their textile fabrics, especially in their silk-weaving. processes are used and the weaves are sometimes extremely elaborate, as in the ease of velvet with pile upon pile (see VELVET ) . and in those curious figured and flowered silks in which there is a decided break or opening between the threads which form one part of the pattern and those of another part or of the background. Embroidery in the hands of the Chinese is as it were an enlargement of the field of textile fabric, for it is used continually to help out and make still more decorative a piece which, as it leaves the weaver's hands. is already very rich.
During the recent centuries of decay and col lapse the arts of China have suffered a great eclipse, and it has seemed at times as if no more fine porcelain or enamel was, or would he, pro duced. But even in our own time there has been a marked increase in the number of exports of such tine wares, and although these :ire apt to be copies of ancient work, there is nothing except European commercial influence to prevent a re birth of native art.
13trittounAeuv. The most important work by a European on the arts of China is Bushell, Ori ental Ceramir _I rt Collection of W. T. Walters New York, HSI)), an expensive folio which con tains many excellent ehromo-lithcrraphs.
house. A II iRlory and DeReription of Chinese Porcelain (New York, 19011, to which Dr. Bushell has also eontrihnted. is valuable. both for its text and its illustrations, although it lacks unity. After that of Dr. Bushell. the most important work on Chinese pottery and porcelain is Gra ndid ier. La ey'ranzigne ehinnise (Paris. 1 Sl94 . Gulla nd. Chinese Porcelain (London, lstiR , gives interest in. descriptions, hut shows an inadequate comprehension of the significance of Chinee art. It is illustrated from photo graphs. \lore truthful than photographs in some ways are the admirable etchings by Jules Jacque ma rt, in Jacqueina rt and Le Plant. Ilistoire de hi po•eclaine (Paris, 1802). Pal6ologue, L'art chi 'lois (Paris, 1888), one of it set of the Biblio thigu• de l'enseignentent des beaux-arts, is a con venient handbook. The :special excellence of Chinese artists, their great ingenuity and taste in pnelueing surface ornamentation in color, is well exemplified in Owen Jones, Examples of Chinese Ornament (London, 18117). William Anderson, in his Catalogue of Japanese and Chinese Paint ings in the British Museum (London, 1880). and in the elaborately illustrated work The Pictorial Arts of Japan ( London, 1880, deals with 1111Se pictorial art in color and in monochrome. Chinese architecture in the strict sense has hard ly been treated by Europeans. There are several essays scantily illustrated in the Publications of the Royal Institute of British Architects (Lou don, 1806-(17, 1873-74, and 1895). The Diction ary of Arehiteeturc of the Architectural Publica tion Society of London, Vol. II. (published about 1865), contains an essay on Chinese architecture which summarizes the small amount of knowl edge then existing. The separate paragraphs are signed by different writers, but the name of the editor is not given. There is little of more recent date. Choisy, in his Histoirc de rarchileetu•c ( Paris. 1899 ) , has given a short but trustworthy analysis of Chinese methods of building. and of the resulting architectural effect. Viollet-le-Due, //1st ()ire do rhabitation humaine (P ar is, 1875), though With a more popular treatment, shows an almost equal understanding of the earliest con struction in bamboos and round timber of small scantling. Crain, in the Dictionary of A•chitec ture and Building New York. 1901.02), has summed up aecuratel• what is really known of Chinese architecture, and his article on Japan in the same work continues the subjeet.