Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 8.djvu/411



This is a faience little known outside Japan. The manufacture was commenced about fifty years ago in Ōsaka, at a place called Jūso-mura, by a workman named Kikko. It was an exact imitation of the Raku ware of Kyōtō, except that coloured glazes were used with greater freedom. Some of the specimens were well modelled and quaint. The ware need not be further described, since it may be classed with the Raku faience of Kyōtō.

This is faience of archaic type. It owed whatever measure of public favour it received to the patronage of Doi, feudal chief of Osumi, who flourished in the middle of the seventeenth century. Using clay found at Kurodani in Yamashiro, the potters of Takahara took Korean wares as their type, copying especially a variety known in Japan as Gohon, or "honourable model." This was crackled faience, having grey or buff glaze, with designs in white under the glaze. Sometimes the decoration is in reddish brown (Shibu-e).

In olden times Ōsaka was known as Naniwa. In a suburb of the city there was established, towards the close of the seventeenth century, a workshop at which faience of some merit was produced. Its pâte was coarse and grey in colour. The glazes used were green and black, and sometimes designs in light-blue were painted under a colourless glaze. Flower-vases of quaint shapes, as for example peonies, vine-leaves,