Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 8.djvu/202

 rative purposes. To such wares the terms Seikan-ji-yaki, Otowa-yaki, or, more generally, Ko-kyōmizu-yaki (old Kyōmizu ware) are indifferently applied. But it must be confessed that this part of the subject is wrapped in considerable obscurity. Nor can the student wonder that it should be so, having regard to the trifling success achieved by the manufacture of such wares. The decorative designs, though slight and insignificant, were not without artistic merit, but the colours and the technique generally were of an inferior order.

It is with Nomura Seisuke (called also Seiyemon and Seibei) that the history of Kyōtō art-faience really commences. There is no name more renowned in the catalogue of Japanese keramists. He was a scion of the noble house of Fujiwara, and in his early youth, a pupil of Sōhaku, a master of Tea Ceremonials, from whom he acquired the keramic proclivities destined to be afterwards so largely developed. Some doubt exists as to the date of his birth, but this is a matter of small moment, since collateral events determine with sufficient precision the period when his career became really interesting. His native place was a village near the temple of Ninwaji (pronounced Ninnaji) in the environs of Kyōtō, and by combining the initial syllable of this word with that of his name (Seisuke) there was obtained the term "Ninsei," by which the man and his works alike are known to posterity.

Ninsei's first productions were simple pieces with shiku-e decoration. By-and-by, however, he made an important addition to his methods. The reader will remember that decoration with vitrifiable enamels was practised at the Hyakken factory in Hizen as early as