Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 7.djvu/106

RV 84 its productions with considerable confidence. The proportions of the various figures, their attitudes and their draperies show great fidelity of observation; the faces have a character of combined majesty and serenity; the technique is generally excellent, and the artists have succeeded in effecting a happy union of idealism and realism. Wood carvings of really fine type make their appearance now for the first time, and the epoch is also remarkable not only for colossal castings such as no other Oriental country has produced, but also for statues in clay and in dry lacquer.

The clay statues, sun-dried, not baked in a furnace, were modelled on a wooden core wrapped in straw which carried a coating of earth and boiled rice. For the surface work the material employed was potter's clay and talc, and to the finished figure colours were applied. It is not improbable that the idea of such a method was suggested by the cire-perdue process of casting. But although very fine results were obtained during the Nara epoch, modelling in clay was not much practised in later times, and ultimately the fashion became limited to keramists and puppet-makers.

The dry-lacquer process presented many difficulties and demanded great care. Two methods are described by Japanese writers. In one, the upper part of the statue having been modelled in clay, a hollow mould was taken from it, and into this was poured a coating of fine lacquer destined to form the outside of the figure. Into the interior, lacquer of gradually increasing thickness was run in layers, and the statue, having been ultimately drawn from the mould, was overlaid with a composition of incense, leaves, and bark of the Illicium religiosum (shikimi),