Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 8.djvu/358

 ing was obtained originally by tying a straw rope round the piece before placing it in the oven. When the rope was consumed there remained on the surface of the pottery an appearance of mottling or irregular lines of red. This crude method and its rude results suggest a fair idea of the old Bizen-yaki's qualifications. A connoisseur's taste must have been specially educated when he consents to pay ten or twenty guineas for a water-holder that might easily be mistaken for a section of a drain-pipe, partially blackened by fire and ornamented with patches or streaks of brick-colour. Later specimens of the Hi-dasuki variety have close grey pâte covered with exceedingly thin, diaphanous glaze. In these the red mottling, from which they derive their name, is evidently produced by some method different from that described above.

A rare variety of Bizen ware has greyish or almost white pâte with diaphanous glaze of the same colour. This ware is known as Kankoku-yaki or Shira-Bizen (white Bizen), having been manufactured at a place called Kankoku. Sometimes its decorative effect is heightened by the addition of red and gold. Numerous specimens of it have been produced within the past ten years and sold as old pieces to amateurs who esteem Shira-Bizen for the sake of its rarity rather than its artistic merits.

Information as to the Bizen potters is quite incommensurate with their merits, for without doubt choice specimens of their work during the eighteenth and the first half of the nineteenth century are among the very highest achievements of Japanese plastic art. At present the chief potter at Imbe is Mori Riuzō. It has been seen that when the Taikō visited Bizen (1583), two representatives of the Mori family were