Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 8.djvu/151

 crackle, resulted from accident. At all events, the shape and size of the crackle were not under control as in China. It usually appears as a series of fissures, following no regular order, which can scarcely have been regarded as an addition to the beauty of the porcelain by its original manufacturers, though some modern connoisseurs are pleased to view it in that light. The craquelé céladon, of which quantities now appear in the market under the name of Hizen-yaki, is a recent manufacture.

Great as is the progress made of late by the Arita potters, their method of preparing and applying vitrifiable enamels is still separated by a considerable interval from the skill of their predecessors of feudal times. It is to this point before all others that the instructed connoisseur will look. Daubing the surface of porcelain with perishable pigments and jewelling it with enamels that retain their fulness and lustre after decades of wear and tear, are two wholly different grades of technique. The former is the brummagem of keramics, inspired by purely mercantile instincts. Those whose eyes have become accustomed to the beautiful porcelains of the Orient with their imperishable pictures in brilliant yet soft enamels or blue under the glaze, can never again look without disgust at the productions of that hybrid branch of Western art which smears upon the surface of porcelain dull, lustreless paints, adapted only to canvas or paper, and incapable of resisting any of the cleansing processes to which vessels in every-day use must of necessity be subjected. In the scramble for food that, thirty years ago, replaced the quiet, comfortable life of patronised competence hitherto led by Japanese artist artisans, a tendency to resort to what-