Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 8.djvu/96

 passing through the Arita district, saw a quantity of newly baked porcelains stacked outside a house. Not supposing that articles of any great value would be thus carelessly treated, he proposed to the master of the house an exchange of a modicum of medicine against one or two pieces of porcelain. The master assented, but to the hawker's surprise bade him take as much of the ware as he could carry. The people of Arita supplement this tale by a regretful contrast between the generous artist of those times and the haggling trader of the present degenerate age.

The specimens of Arita ware that found their way to the factory of the Dutch in Deshima did not fail to attract attention. These shrewd traders were very ready to add another item to their list of exports, but they had their own ideas as to the sort of wares calculated to attract European fancy. Kakiemon's pieces did not satisfy them. Something more likely to appeal to vulgar taste was required. One need only consider the state of keramics in Holland at that epoch to comprehend how improbable it was that the traders of Deshima would appreciate the chaste style of Kakiemon or the motives of his refined art. During the first fifty years (1610–1660) of the industry in Holland, the potters of Delft imposed no restraint upon the intemperance of their imagination. Their ideal of a choice vase was one loaded with ornamentation, crowded with figures, and distinguished chiefly by evidences of minute effort. It was during this period that Tomes Janz produced his Jugement dernier, a plaque encumbered with four hundred personages; Adriaan Van de Venne his Pêcheurs d'âmes, where one sees a mob of thousands of tiny beings swarming beside a river; and Herman Pietersz his Choc de cavalerie, in