Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 8.djvu/331

 One of the most remarkable efforts to which foreign contact roused Japan's keramists is displayed in the white porcelain of Tajimi with elaborate modelling in high relief. Even the gossamer egg-shell ware of Ichi-no-kura looks clumsy beside it, and one is inclined to doubt whether the celebrated flowers of Vincennes that deceived King Louis himself can have been more carefully moulded than some of the specimens Tajimi now furnishes. Plum-blossoms, in which neither leaf, petal, nor pistil differs by a hair's breadth from the dimensions prescribed by nature, or racemes of wistaria with every tendril and foliation copied unerringly, may not be very fitting subjects for production in the most fragile form of an eminently fragile material, but as examples of patience and dexterity they cannot fail to command admiration. It would probably puzzle the best artists of Europe to achieve any finer specimens of modelling in porcelain than those sent by the factory of Tajimi to the first Japanese Exhibition of native manufactures (1877). This Tajimi-yaki is, however, quite a modern production, and the great difficulty of transport as well as the expense of manufacture have hitherto prevented many pieces from leaving the country. The colour of the ware, too, is seldom quite satisfactory. A perfectly pure white is difficult to find.

The Mino potteries are scarcely less important than those of Owari as a producing centre. Their scope, however, is different. For while at Owari large, imposing specimens are manufactured and the tastes of the foreign market are constantly consulted, in Mino small pieces for domestic use are chiefly turned out, and the workmen look primarily to sales in their