Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 7.djvu/166

 censers for the tea-clubs as well as for the public in general. Such objects were not manufactured for the first time at so late a date as the seventeenth century. Splendid examples in iron, in silver, and in other metals had been chiselled in previous eras by sculptors of sword-furniture. But the works referred to here are bronze. Not until a comparatively recent date did the art of casting that metal become so refined and delicate that its products began to rank with the forged and chiselled works of silversmiths and chisellers of sword-furniture (to be spoken of presently). Some authorities maintain that "parlour bronzes" were first manufactured by Nakayama Shōyeki, popularly called Yōjuro, an armourer of Takata in Echigo, who settled in Kyōtō in 1573, and was equally successful in chiselling iron and in casting bronze. Certainly Shoyeki's descendants were highly skilled bronze-casters. But no authenticated casting of his survives, and it is consequently usual to speak of a female expert, Kame, of Nagasaki (1661 to 1690), as the pioneer of this kind of work. By some authorities, generally well informed, the great error has been committed of attributing to Kame the first use of the cire-perdue process, which, as the reader knows, had been commonly employed by Japanese metal-casters for many centuries before her time. The fact is that the excellence of Kame's modelling,—she was especially noted for censers in the form of a quail,—the fine surface of her bronze and the clean sharpness of her casting, attracted so much attention that her methods were regarded as a new departure. Another common error is to say that Kame's era was immediately antecedent to that of Seimin, a bronze-caster whose name is known to all Western collectors.