Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 8.djvu/337

 the Chōsa flambé faience, and they are almost invariably disfigured by technical defects.

Another variety of faience manufactured at Karatsu, from the close of the sixteenth century, was directly copied from a Korean stone- ware called E-Gorai, or "painted Korean." Pottery of this class was known as E-garatsu. It may be described as grey or brownish ware, sometimes having a tinge of green, with archaic designs boldly executed in reddish brown or black under the glaze.

The Karatsu potters never marked their pieces, and have left no personal records. At the beginning of the eighteenth century they were taken under the patronage of their feudal chief, who, like the other nobles of Japan, began to adopt the practice of sending to the Court of the Shōgun in Yedo, or to his brother peers, specimens of the best products of his fief. Pieces manufactured for this special purpose were called Kenjo-garatsu, or "Presentation Karatsu." Among them are cups, tea-jars, etc., covered with thin glaze, generally of dusky green hue, and having under the glaze simple designs formed by incising the pâte and filling the incisions with white clay. These are tolerably tasteful. They bear a close resemblance to the faience manufactured at Yatsushiro in the same province. But the best variety of the Kenjo-garatsu is a stone-ware the white or grey glaze of which is so manipulated that it assumes the form of little globules, remarkably distinct and regular. Specimens of this are rare. The idea is said to have been derived from a species of Chinese porcelain, made early in the Ming period, the surface of which was granulated like the skin of an orange. But in the Chinese ware the glaze is continuous, while in the Japanese