[485] This is a variety of the key pattern or Greek fret, which is of world-wide distribution.
[486] A less usual variety has the ovoid body actually surmounted by a beaker
[487] See Bushell, O. C. A., p. 797.
[488] See Bushell’s translation, op. cit., p. 4.
[489] See Bushell, O. C. A., p. 489.
[490] Among others is the “tantalus cup,” with a small tube in the bottom concealed by a figure of a man or smiling boy. When the water in the cup reaches the top of the tube it runs away from the base.
[491] Loc. cit., p. 204.
[492] The cup with handle was made in the tea services for the European market, but the handle is not, as has been sometimes asserted, a European addition to the cup. Cups with handles were made in China as early as the T’ang dynasty (see Plate 11, Fig. 2); but for both wine and tea drinking the Chinese seem to have preferred the handleless variety.
[493] When the names are known the incidents can usually be found in such works of reference as Mayers’ Chinese Reader’s Manual, Giles’s Chinese Biographical Dictionary, and Anderson’s Catalogue of Chinese and Japanese Pictures.
[494] Told in the Shui Hu Chuan; see O. C. A., p. 570, a note in Bushell’s excellent chapter on Chinese decorative motives, of which free use has been made here.