Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 8.djvu/154

 appealing to vulgar fancy. They were not even content to export the more richly enamelled porcelain of the Chinese school, until the profusion of its decoration had been still further increased at their bidding. Thus, in the end, the Japanese ware that came into the hands of European collectors was neither purely Japanese nor purely Chinese, but a compound of both, with a considerable admixture of foreign conceits. The decorative fashions of this "Old Japan" were as inconsistent with the art instincts of the country of its origin as the shapes in which it was manufactured for export—five or three pieces, beakers and jars, en suite—were unserviceable in Japanese houses. Nothing was known for a long time of Japan's workers in pottery and faience, though it was unquestionably in these branches of their art that her keramists gave most untrammelled play to their native genius, producing pieces of the greatest beauty and quaintness. Europe did not really discover its ignorance until the Paris Exposition of 1867. The discovery might have been made sooner. Several years previously Sir Rutherford Alcock, British Representative at the Court of Japan, had sent to the London Exhibition a collection that ought to have opened the eyes of connoisseurs. But from some inexplicable cause these admirable specimens, selected with judgment and under exceptionally favourable circumstances by the English connoisseur, only served as a feeble prelude to the effect produced by the Paris exhibits. In 1867, at last, people became aware that the "Porcelaine des Indes à fleurs," the richly decorated "famille Chrysanthemo-Tæonienne," on which alone Japan's keramic reputation had hitherto depended, was in truth but one among a multitude of charming productions, and that the pottery and fai-