In the Ch’ien Lung period there was an ever-increasing tendency to displace the Chinese patterns in favour of European ornament. About the middle of the century small bouquets and scattered floral sprays in the well-known Meissen style of painting made their appearance, and the gradual invasion of the border patterns by European motives is apparent. It may be of interest to note a few of the latter as they occur on dated specimens:
1. Light feathery scrolls, gilt or in colours: first half of Ch’ien Lung period.
2. Rococo ornaments combined with floral patterns: first half of Ch’ien Lung period.
3. Large shell-like ornaments and scroll edged frames of lattice work, loosely strung together: early Ch’ien Lung period.
4. Similar motives with more elaborate framework, enclosing diapers, and interrupted by four peacocks at regular intervals and generally black and gold: about 1740 to 1760.
5. Black and brown hexagon diaper, edged with dragon arabesques in gold: an early type of border, but lasting as late as 1780.
6. Composite borders with diapers, symbols, flowers, etc., and sometimes including butterflies, half Chinese and half European: on specimens ranging from 1765 to 1820.
This last border pattern was adopted at Coalport and in other English factories to surround the willow pattern.[467]
In the last decades of the century, such purely European borders as the swags of flowers used at Bow and Bristol, floral and laurel wreaths and husk festoons; the pink scale patterns of Meissen; ribbons and dotted lines winding through a floral band, feather scrolls, etc., of Sèvres origin, and afterwards adopted at Worcester, Bristol, Lowestoft and elsewhere in England; blue with gilt edges and gilt stars, as on the Derby borders, which also derive from Sèvres; and the corn-flower sprigs of the French hard-paste porcelains.
A conspicuous feature of the Ch’ien Lung export porcelain in general is the use of a thin, washy pink in place of the thick carmine of the early famille rose. This is a colour common to European porcelain of the period, and it may have been suggested to the Chinese by specimens of Western wares. We may, perhaps, note here a design of Oriental figures (as on the Mandarin porcelain) in pink and red surrounded by borders of pink scale diaper, broken by small panels of ornament. It has no connection with the armorial group, but it has apparently been bandied back and forward from East to West. Based on a Chinese original, it was largely copied on English porcelain, such as Worcester, Lowestoft, etc., and apparently services of the English make found their way east and were copied again at some coast factory, or even in Japan, for the export trade. Much of this hybrid ware is found in Australia and on the east coast of Africa, and though the material and the colours are obviously Oriental, the drawing of the faces reflects a European touch. The porcelain is coarse and greyish, and the decoration roughly executed, probably in the first decades of the nineteenth century.