Page:Brinkley - China - Volume 1.djvu/235

 manner of distributing the design. Here the Japanese shows a far higher artistic instinct than the Chinese. The latter, remembering chiefly that he had a certain ground to fill, filled it without any idea of charming the fancy as well as dazzling the eye. His conception of division was purely mathematical. He parcelled out the surface by the aid of concentric borders or parallel lines, and if he found that he had to occupy two spaces of wholly different dimensions, separated, perhaps, by a leafy branch or a bunch of flowers, it did not shock him to fill one with a big phœnix and the other with a miniature specimen of the same bird. Hard, mechanical practicality was the prominent trait of his methods. But the Japanese, when he sat down to decorate a vase, delighted to divide its surface by some eccentrically symmetrical disposition of lines and curves, the spaces enclosed within which, while they admirably preserved their mutual equipoise as well as their sensible though not easily traceable relation to a common centre, acquired so much individuality that to fill them with wholly diverse decorative subjects never suggested any discordant contrast. Little observation is needed to familiarise the connoisseur with this prevailing bent of Japanese decorative art, and to enable him to distinguish between the styles of the neighbouring empires. At the same time, neither this guide, nor yet the greater freedom, boldness, and fidelity of the Japanese decorator's brush, can always be implicitly relied on. There are Chinese and Japanese specimens of which the photographs could not be distinguished. This is especially the case with plates, and other flat objects. Here, however, the connoisseur has the assistance of "spur-marks," or little points