I
OLD DERBY
It is not too much to hope that the eyes of some reader will stray into these pages as a wanderer in a strange land, one whose interest in china has never been awakened. We hope to lure such a wight with sweet cajolery. If perchance we can get him to examine one or two dainty specimens of old blue china we shall have him enmeshed in our toils. If he be an artist he will not escape from the enchantment of Derby and of Worcester. If he be a mere business man, here is an item from Messrs. Christie’s catalogue of a sale on January 14, 1902: “Coffee-pot and cover, Worcester. Painted with figures, birds, and flowers, in colours in Chinese taste, and with alternate dark-blue scale-pattern panels—£28 7s.” And this, mark you, is an ordinary item selected at random, a business sample, if you will.
Mr. Andrew Lang, in one of his “Ballades in Blue China,” has cunningly put into rhyme a poet’s reason for his love of china:—
“There’s a joy without canker or cark,
There’s a pleasure eternally new;
’Tis to gloat on the glaze and the mark
Of china that’s ancient and blue,
Unchipped all the centuries through,
It has passed, since the chime of it rang,