Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 8.djvu/98

 industry as having been practised for some years only before the middle of the seventeenth century. It had, in fact, been practised for not more than fifty years, while the enamelled ware which became a staple of the Dutch export trade had first been produced at Arita some fourteen or fifteen years before "le sieur Wagenaar" conceived the idea of meddling with its decoration.

A theory recently advanced by English writers is not only that the celebrated "Hawthorn pattern" was invented in Japan, but that many fine specimens of ware thus decorated were exported by the Dutch during the seventeenth century. Messrs. Audsley and Bowes suggest that the "fleur sur un fond bleu," attributed to Wagenaar, was no other than the "Hawthorn." It has already been stated that this pattern is found on pieces manufactured by Gorodayu Go-shonzui, nearly a century and a half before Wagenaar's time, and it may now be added that the "Hawthorn"—known in Japan as Korimme—was seldom if ever employed by Japanese decorators as a principal subject. They used it, not infrequently, as a subordinate design; and with the conception of a white pattern on a blue ground they have been familiar for more than three hundred and fifty years. But the "Hawthorns" of American and European collections are essentially Chinese. Nothing that could be mistaken for them was formerly manufactured in Japan.

As for Wagenaar's "fleur sur un fond bleu," it may reasonably be interpreted by the light of what Japanese tradition tells about the early fashions of decoration at Arita. Kakiemon's pieces were of milk-white porcelain, generally with scanty designs in vitrifiable enamels only. Wagenaar's order to the potters was