Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 7.djvu/155

RV 131 A subsidiary but often necessary part of the founder's work, and one in which the Japanese exhibit very great skill, is the repairing of any defects that the castings may show on their removal from the moulds. Thus, for example, occasionally the rim or other part of a vase may be imperfect, owing to the retention of air in the mould when the metal was poured in. In this case the imperfect part is carefully remodelled in wax on the defective casting, a clay mould is made over it in the usual way, and the wax is melted out. A certain quantity of metal is then poured in and allowed to run out until the edges of the defective part have been partially melted, when the outlet is stopped and the mould allowed to fill. When it has solidified, the clay mould is broken away and the excess of metal filed off.

Handles and ornamental appendages, which have been separately cast, are frequently attached to objects in this manner. Separate parts of complicated groups and often figures are similarly united, and often this is so skilfully done that it is impossible to say whether the whole is a true single casting or is composed of several pieces which have been separately cast.

Rude as the appliances and methods of the Japanese art founder, which I have just described, may seem to us, he has produced with them castings in bronze on all scales, which, with all the modern equipments of our foundries, it would be difficult for us to excel. The simplicity, adaptability, and portable character of his appliances have been of special advantage to him in his remarkable achievements in colossal castings. Thus, when a huge image of a Buddhist divinity or a bell of unusual weight was required for a temple or any locality, the whole of the operations were conducted on the spot. Temporary sheds for the modelling were erected in the temple grounds. The furnace and blowers were transported thither in segments; sometimes the latter were even made by the local carpenters. If the casting had to be made in one piece, the necessary number of cupola furnaces, each with its blower, were erected around the mould. The cost of the blast was nil, as the services of any number of eager volunteers, from the crowds which congregated at the temple festival on the day of casting,