The baneful influence of contact with the West, already noticed in dealing with Chinese porcelain, did not fail to make itself felt in the work of the Arita potters. From the last quarter of the seventeenth century may be dated the appearance of the ware generally considered in Europe as peculiarly characteristic of Japanese ceramics, but in reality of a type entirely alien from native ideas. Though made at Arita, it is usually called by the name of the neighbouring port of Imari, from which it was exported. The style is embodied in jars and dishes generally of large dimensions, decorated in underglaze blue of muddy tone, with dull red, green, purple and yellow enamels and gilding added at a subsequent firing over the glaze. Their effect is occasionally pleasing and handsome, but in general these objects have a dull and lifeless air that places them among the least interesting of all Oriental wares. This style was sometimes copied both at Meissen and at Chelsea during their earlier stages, and suggested some of the designs of the Worcester factory, but it was not till the first decades of the nineteenth century that it was extensively imitated, when the “Japan patterns” of Derby and the Staffordshire works enjoyed a great popularity; it may fairly be said that in the reduced scale necessitated by their application to table wares, and in the livelier colouring obtainable in the English soft porcelain, these patterns gain an attractiveness wanting in their Oriental forerunners.
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Other kilns were founded in the neighbourhood of Arita under the protection of feudal lords, by whose patronage they were secured from the debasing effects of foreign trade. Porcelain began to be made about 1660 at the kilns of Okawaji, founded at an earlier date for making earthenware by a chief of the Nabeshima family. Here the methods of painting employed were those of the later Arita potters, but the colours are purer and the decoration, designed to please native tastes, is at once less florid and more spontaneous in character.
Fine porcelain was made in the second half of the eighteenth century at Mikawaji, also in the province of Hizen, under the munificent patronage of the feudal lord of Hirato. The wares are of two principal types. The first is painted in blue of a quiet grey tone with designs of exquisite delicacy, inspired by the Chinese “blue and white” of the time of Hsüan Tê; and it should be noted that this milder quality of blue was deliberately aimed at by the potters of the best Japanese schools, in preference to the deep sapphire blue attained by the Chinese at their highest period of development. The second class of Mikawaji ware is seen in the skilfully modelled figures of divinities, children, or mythical creatures such as the Corean lion; they are usually enlivened with coloured glazes of three harmonious tones, blue, russet-brown, and black.
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Two other Japanese factories remain to be noticed in their relation to Chinese ceramics, in the provinces of Kaga and Kishiu respectively. The kilns at Kutani in Kaga were established in 1664 and made two distinct classes of ware. One of these is called “Ao Kutani,” or green Kutani, from the predominance of green in the colouring, and is characterised by the use of transparent green, yellow, manganese-violet, and blue enamels of great intensity, washed over strong floral or landscape designs drawn in heavy black outline. This type is perfectly exemplified by a fine dish in the series at South Kensington brought together by the Japanese Government in 1876. While it appears to be reminiscent in its methods of the “three colour” class of the Chinese, its artistic character is free from extraneous elements and entirely Japanese in genius. The other type, known par excellence as “Ko Kutani,” or old Kutani ware, includes a brilliant red among its colours, and is the ancestor of the red and gold Kaga porcelain of recent times.
PLATE 15
Ewer and Basin, Sèvres, dated 1763, painted with groups of children in the manner of Boucher on a jaune jonquille ground. Mark of the decorator Catrice. Ewer, height, 6-5/8 in.; basin, length, 10¾ in. Jones Collection.
No. 753-1882. See p. [56].
Mark: