Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 8.djvu/445

 period of complete prostitution. No new skill was developed, and what remained of the old was expended chiefly upon the manufacture of meretricious objects, disfigured by excess of decoration and not relieved by any excellence of technique. In spite of their artistic defects, these specimens were exported in considerable numbers by merchants in the foreign settlements, and, their first cost being very low, they found a not unremunerative market. But as European and American collectors became better acquainted with the capacities of the pre-Meiji potters, the great inferiority of these new specimens was recognised, and, the prices commanded by the old wares gradually appreciated. What then happened was very natural: imitations of the old wares were produced, and having been sufficiently disfigured by staining and other processes calculated to lend an air of rust and age, were sold to ignorant persons, who laboured under the singular yet common hallucination that the points to be looked for in specimens from early kilns are, not technical excellence, decorative tastefulness and richness of colour, but dinginess, imperfections, and dirt; persons who imagined, in short, that defects which they would condemn at once in new porcelains ought to be regarded as merits in old. Of course a trade of that kind, based on deception, could not have permanent success. One of the imitators of "old Satsuma" was among the first to perceive that a new line must be struck out. Yet the earliest results of his awakened perception helped to demonstrate still further the depraved spirit that had come over Japanese art. For he applied himself to manufacture wares having a close affinity with the shocking monstrosities used for sepulchral purposes in ancient Apulia, where frag-