Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 8.djvu/109

 fited, of course, by all this. Exquisite specimens of enamelled ware were produced at the Arita factories, but the workmen generally adhered to a custom handed down from the days of Tokuemon and Kakiemon,—instead of marking their vases with their own names or those of the year periods, they either copied Chinese seals and dates, or used a conventional ideograph or group of ideographs, quite useless for purposes of identification. The amateur is, therefore, without any easy guide to determine the age or maker of a piece. He must look only to the quality of the pâte, the brilliancy of the enamels, and the purity and intensity of the blue under the glaze. Any appearance of chalkiness in the clay indicates youth, and, as a general rule, the clearer and more metallic the ring of the biscuit, the greater the age of the piece. The colour of the bleu sous couverte is also a help. The tone is richest and most pleasing in specimens manufactured during the eighteenth century; in vases of earlier date it is often impure and blurred. To very choice, elaborate, and carefully finished examples of enamelling it will generally be unsafe to assign a greater age than one hundred and fifty years, and, from what has been stated above, the amateur will see that the colours of the enamels afford some slight assistance: the red should be deep and even, with a dull, rather than a glossy, surface; while lemon-yellow, purple, and black in combination are evidences at once of choice ware and of middle-period (1700–1830) manufacture. Another easily detected point is the colour of the biscuit. In the wares of Kakiemon, or rather in those of his school, there is found a cream-white surface, sometimes almost equal to the ivory-white of Korea and China. But