Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 8.djvu/170

 Modern, but which in reality represent nothing more than different degrees of medication. In truth, those "evidences of age" which the amateur is so much disposed to trust, are of all things most deceptive. The first impression their presence produces should be one of suspicion. Steeping in strong infusions of tea, boiling in decoctions of yasha and sulphuric acid, or exposure to the fumes of damp incense, are methods thoroughly appreciated and constantly practised by the Japanese dealer, but so little understood by collectors that places of honour are often accorded to specimens still besmeared with the sediment of the drug used to discolour them. Until the bric-à-brac buyer has acquired ability to distinguish between the results of doctoring and the traces of time, he will do well to remember that, as a rule, the best things are the most carefully preserved, especially in Japan, where objects of virtu not only pass a great part of their existence swathed in silk or crêpe wrappers and hidden away in the recesses of a storehouse, but are also cleansed repeatedly from every stain of use.

What is the charm which has justly placed the old Satsuma-yaki at the head of all Japanese faience? The question is well answered by Messrs. Audsley and Bowes when they say that "in the entire range of keramic art there has been no surface produced more refined in treatment or more perfectly adapted to receive and enhance the value of coloured decorations, than that presented by the best specimens of old Satsuma faience." One might almost suppose that the idea of this ware had been inspired by the exquisitely harmonious effect of gold decoration upon ivory mellowed by age. The Satsuma surface, however, is even superior to ivory, for its network of minute