“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), from Botanic Garden.