First China’s sons, with early art elate, / Form’d the gay tea- pot, and the pictured plate; / Saw with illumined brow and dazzled eyes / In the red stove vitrescent colours rise; / Speck’d her tall beakers with enamel’d stars, / Her monster- josses, and gigantic jars; / Smear’d her huge dragons with metallic hues, / With golden purples, and cobaltic blues; / Bade on wide hills her porcelain castles glare, / And glazed Pagodas tremble in the air.
—Erasmus Darwin (1731-1802), Botanic Garden.