Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 8.djvu/243

 Imperial Palace at the Harvest Festival (1853). He then changed his name to Irie Sakon. His son, Dosen, abandoned art manufactures, and now produces porcelain utensils for use in laboratories, hospitals, and so forth.

Entering the present century, the student finds one of the greatest names in Japan's keramic annals. Nishimura Zengoro was the eleventh descendant of a potter who worked at Nara, in the province of Yamato, about the year 1501. The family then occupied itself chiefly with the manufacture of earthenware idols, but towards the close of the century it became famous for the excellence of its fire-boxes (furo). These were an important article of Cha-no-Yu equipment, and their manufacture often occupied the attention of the most skilled keramists. Patronised by the renowned dilettanti Shukō and Jō-o, the Nishimura family's furo came into fashion, and the production was continued successfully down to the time of the tenth generation, whose representative was Nishimuro Zengoro, known in art circles as Ryōzen. It is of this man's son that special note must be taken. His name was the same as that of his father,—Zengoro,—but by keramists he was called Hōzen. At first he was apparently content to follow the example of his ancestors, and to manufacture only fire-boxes. Even in this work his remarkable dexterity in combining pâtes of different colours gave earnest of greater achievements in other branches. In the Kyowa era (1801–1803) he studied diligently at the Awata factory, and practised the manufacture of decorated porcelain and faience. Before long his céladons and blue-and-white porcelain attracted wide attention, and to these, like his great rival Mokubei, he added ad-