Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 8.djvu/113

 It is impossible to condemn too strongly the wretched products of this mercenary impulse. Everybody knows and abhors them nowadays. Their representative is a vase, from three to six feet in height, in shape resembling a truncated soda-water bottle, with its neck spread out into the semblance of a scalloped trumpet. Over the surface of this is scrawled an elaborate decoration in thin, washy red paint; and in reserved panels are rudely drawn figures of women or warriors with lacquered drapery and armour. Frequently the space between the panels is covered with black lacquer which serves as a ground for scrolls in gold or red. The whole thing is vulgar and meretricious in the extreme. Nevertheless, great quantities of this "Nagasaki Ware" were exported, and many an American or European amateur flatters himself that in the big, obtrusive vases which disfigure his vestibule he has genuine specimens of Japanese art, whereas he has, in truth, nothing more than a Japanese estimate of his own bad taste. Some manufactures of this degraded period have their surfaces completely covered with lacquer, upon which are designs in gold and colours. In such pieces the porcelain base might equally well be wood. In others the outer surface is coated with lacquer, while the inner has decoration in enamels or blue under the glaze. In others, again, there are reserved, in the lacquer, medallions or panels which are filled with decoration. And finally figures, scrolls, and diapers, in raised or flat gold lacquer, are applied to the surface of old pieces which were originally manufactured without any ornament. Of this last variety great quantities have been shipped to Europe and America, where they pass among ignorant per-