Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 8.djvu/69

 variety. Céladon continued to be produced at Song-do, or in its neighbourhood, throughout the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, but it is easy to identify these later specimens by the crude, garish aspect of their glaze, their coarse crackle,—the best early specimens are without crackle,—and their generally inferior technique.

The third principal variety of Korai-yaki (or Kao-li-yao) is faience. It has fine pâte, tolerably close, and varying in colour from light red to brownish grey. In the biscuit decorative designs are incised, and the incisions are filled with white clay, over which is run glaze of greater or less thickness and lustre. The glaze is seldom of exactly similar colour in two pieces. It varies from rich, full-toned brown to light grey, something of the tone being due to the colour of the pâte, which is partially discernible through its diaphanous covering. In occasional specimens the red biscuit is here and there sufficiently visible to impart an appearance of rosy flecks or clouds, a feature which, though apparently a technical defect, commands the admiration of Japanese connoisseurs. The decoration is elaborated, in very rare instances, by the use of a dark brown pigment—the juice of the Diospyros Kaki—under the glaze, but it is a curious fact that never, so far as is known, did Korean potters employ blue sous couverte. No fully satisfactory reason is assigned for this failure to adopt a style so much practised and so justly esteemed in the neighbouring empire of China. The generally received hypothesis is that supplies of cobalt did not exist in Korea.

Faience of the class described here ranked lowest among the keramic products of Korea. It is the ware alluded to in that passage of the Tao-lu which Julien somewhat perplexingly renders: "Si les vases sont ornées de branches de fleurs blanches, elles n'ont dans ce royaume (Corée) qu'une valeur médiocre." In China all surface ornamentation applied to porcelain or pottery is spoken of as "flowers," and what the author of the Tao-lu really intended to say was that specimens having decoration in white were counted of mediocre quality in Korea. Yet among such specimens there are many possessing great attractions for Western connoisseurs. Their