Public ledger. [volume] (Memphis, Tenn.) 1865-1893, 1876-03-15
The chIna nIanIA in Lonaop. .
The London Spectator says:

nc 1fCCkhtUl ohlbs
II is difficult even for a comparative
stranger to walk about West London
without noticing the extraordinary mum.
Der Of curiosity shops. and especially
shops dealing in old china and old brass,
which have recently sprung up, while
habitues wonder daily how their owners
contrive to exist.
The very business OF the curio-dealer
is picking up things for shillings
which they afterward sell for pounds or
scores Of pounds TO particular custom
ers. Sometimes they buy out Of a
knowledge that, within limits which we
can see, but which we confess we are
puzzled accurately to define, they have
q right to use. The china cup, say, is
worth intrinsically sovereign, but it
has on il a mark which shows that il
came from q certain hand, and is, there
fore, in connoisseurS eyes, cheap at ten
pounds or il has another, proving il to
have been manufactured in certain
emperors reign, three centuries ago, and
ls, therefore, worth two hundred pounds.
It is hard to say why dealer in china
should not utilize knowledge like that, as
dealer in stocks utilizes his iniorma.
ton, or dealer in. say sarsaparilla.
utillzes his experience that the stuff
looks rotten long before il is much in-
jured. AT all events, he does utilize it,
and now and then picks up specimen
which, if carried to the right people.
whom, by the way, the poor seller does
not knoW--yields him not 80 much a
profit as prize, He does not make
hundred per cent, but ten thousand per
cent, in few days. OF course such
coups are rare, ss coups are rare at the
gaming table; but the small dealer who
knows lives always in hopes OF making
one, haunts auctions, deals with sailors,
and makes forays, sometimes wonder
fully successful into remote country
places, where in past years careful
housewives have accumulated china. he
ID not looking out for thieves, but for
Ignorant people, who do not yet know
that sweet color" will redeem any ugli.
ness Of pattern, who cannot understand
why unique specimen should be worth
lts weight in gold FIVE times over, and
who are not yet aware how very rich
some Of the foolish are. 4ss
Wewonder when this particular china
mania will end There are thousand
people in London at this moment who
are giving prices for specimens Of china
which would only be justified If they
were jewels, or pictures, or rare books,
OF things the value Of which could only
decline With general decline in rich
mems purchasing power; and the
chances are that, if they are not buying
simply to possess fer Q time what no one
else possesses, they are blundering hor
ribly. Fine china will always have a
value. The taste for beautiful color in
particular has been born in the West, is
being grati6ed on every hand, sometimes
in the most outrageous ways, and it will
no more die here than it has died in
Asia, where the conditions Of climate
being favorable to its birth has lived
1000 years; bat that is no excuse for a
manic like this. The taste for color is
not necessarily ruinous. People will al
ways give reasonable sums for fine china,
as they will for fine bulbs, but they will
not only give unreasonable sumo while
the passion lasts. Nine-tenths Of the
china bought now has no charm what
ever beyond q perfection Of subdued
color, the influence OF which will depart
as men become accustomed to it, and
which, as we believe, is not only inimi-
table but capable Of repetition. There is
no subtihty Of genius in the Chinese blue,
that it should never be repeated, and
once it is repeated-once, that is, its pc.
cpliar and, we admit, very beautiful,
effect has been fully caught and made
familiar = the msnia-prices will drop
dewn.