Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 8.djvu/107

 the annual exports from Deshima comprised about one hundred bales of such ware, and it is known that the Dresden collection was put together by August II. between the years 1698 and 1724. On the whole, it may be concluded that small and probably diminishing quantities of Japan's keramic productions continued to be shipped to Europe until the middle of the eighteenth century, by which time the manufactures of the European potteries had become so cheap, so plentiful, and so excellent that the preëminence of specimens from the Far East was rudely challenged. With regard to the possibility of Japan's porcelain having found its way to Eastern countries in the early years of its manufacture, it appears from the evidence of a terrestrial globe constructed in 1670 and preserved in the Tōkyō Museum, that Japan had commercial relations with the Philippines, Cambodia, Tonquin, Annam, Siam, and various parts of China, in the beginning of the seventeenth century. Among her exports to Cochin China and Tonquin keramic wares are mentioned, and it is on record that her ships trading with China carried back considerable quantities of Chinese porcelain and faience.

By the middle of the eighteenth century the number of factories had increased to twenty, all situated within a radius of a few miles. A book (the Sankai-meisan-dzuye) published in 1799 tells that even at that date the processes of enamel decoration were practised at one only (Akaye-machi) of these factories. Meanwhile the art had made much progress. Greater skill had been developed in the preparation of the pâte, but, above all, in the use of vitrifiable enamels. During the first half-century of the manufacture the decorator's palette was limited, with per-