Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 8.djvu/324

 tracery of dull, impure blues, greens, and reds upon bowls and vases thin enough to consort with their weak-toned decoration. It may be briefly stated that before the opening of the country to foreign intercourse the art of cloisonné enamelling never attained much development in Japan. It was practised, indeed, with sufficient diligence to supply a considerable number of specimens; but the best of these were comparatively unattractive. No sooner, however, were foreign markets thrown open than enamellers, like all the other artist-artisans of Japan, responded to this new demand, and with the assistance of imported pigments and Western chemists began to produce pieces of great beauty and brilliancy. The use of cloisonné enamelling for porcelain decoration was among the earliest inspirations of the new school. The porcelain was treated as though it were metal. Its surface was covered with a network of copper cells, into which enamels were filled. There was only this difference between the methods pursued with copper and porcelain: the enamel pastes for the decoration of the latter were soft and easily vitrifiable, so that they refused to respond to the polishing processes subsequently employed. Thus the result was dull and unprepossessing. It would be difficult to conceive a wider departure from the canons of true art than this reckless association of hard metal and brittle porcelain. Such a vitiated industry could never have flourished under purely Japanese auspices. Its only patrons were Europeans and Americans whose tastes lay in the direction of curiosities rather than of works of art. Encouraged by these patrons, the industry is still continued, though on a reduced scale, in Nagoya, the chief town of Owari, by a company called the