Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 8.djvu/315

 those with even surfaces entails the rejection of so many that the price becomes prohibitive. So it is with plaques, table-tops, and other large, flat objects, which the Seto workmen are fond of producing as tours de force. These, when they do succeed, are decorative and imposing; but the percentage of failures is absurdly large, and the cost proportionately high. Difficulties of a cognate nature have always beset the Japanese keramist. Some lack of mathematical regularity is so common in his pieces that ignorant foreign amateurs often regard imperfections of shape as a mark of age and excellence. How is such infatuation to be described? It is true that the morbidly rustic canons of Cha-no-Yu tolerate technical accidents which shock the instincts of less romantic critics. Yet, even by these extravagant æsthetes, such blemishes are not approved, but only condoned for the sake of some real or imaginary excellence in the specimen they disfigure. Apart from the historical utensils of the tea-clubs, an object of art, to be acceptable in Japanese eyes, must before all things possess correctness of form. A lacquer box, however elaborate its decoration, however rich its material, is fatally condemned should its lid deviate by so much as a hair's breadth from perfect fit. So in keramics, the highest test of the potter's skill was to produce a set of rice-bowls, for example, of such correct shape and uniform size that their covers should be absolutely interchangeable. In fact a misshapen vessel has always been as flagrant an evidence of faulty technique in Japanese estimation as in European. The potteries of Owari, with a curiously blind confidence in the balance of chances, continue to use a greatly varying conglomerate of felspar and quartz, trusting to fortunately ex-