Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 8.djvu/123

, but in the choicest wares the latter material was replaced by Satsuma ash (vide Satsuma-yaki). The cost of transporting one thousand pounds of stone from Amakusa was about £1, and of that quantity not more than fifty or sixty pounds were used in the manufacture. The Satsuma ash must have been still more expensive, and after this heavy outlay had been incurred on account of raw materials, no limit was set to the labour of purification and preparation. Remarkable results were obtained. The pâte of good Hirado-yaki is milk white, and as fine as pipe-clay. Examined attentively, it is found to be virtually free from the dark, gritty particles so common in Imari ware. The glaze is pure in tone, its surface velvet-like, lustrous and almost entirely without the minute granulations usually observable in "Old Japan."

It is not, however, till the decoration is considered that the incomparable beauties of this Hirado-yaki become fully apparent. With rare exceptions, blue is the only colour employed. It is not the intense, fathomless colour of the old Chinese keramists, nor yet is it the light, comparatively bodiless blue of the Nabeshima ware. It is a tint between the two, exquisitely soft and clear, but remarkable for delicacy rather than brilliancy. Connoisseurs whose standard of excellence as to bleu sous couverte is fixed by the rich, solid body-colour of first-class Chinese "Hawthorns," have been disposed to place the Hirado blue in a lower category, and to assume that the Chinese colour could not be imitiated at Mikawachi. That is a misconception. The Japanese potter preferred the more delicate colour, and spared neither trouble nor expense to produce it. In the eighteenth century supplies of the cobaltiferous mineral employed at