Porcelain

by Edward Dillon

Kakiyemon Ware.—Under this name it will be convenient to describe the compact group of decorated porcelain that we find taking so prominent a place in our old collections. Of this ware there is a most representative series of specimens in the British Museum. There are also many interesting pieces scattered through the rooms of Hampton Court. The chief characteristics of this Kakiyemon ware are the creamy-white paste, without the bluish tinge so common in other Japanese porcelain, the moulded forms (in the case of the small vases and of the dishes with scalloped edges), and above all the peculiar nature of the decoration that is somewhat sparely scattered over the ground. Here we find the well-known combination of the pine, the bamboo, and the plum (Japanese Sho-chiku-bai) associated with quaintly executed figures in old Chinese costume. In the foreground is often found a curious hedge or trellis-fence of straw or rushes, and at times, at the side, a grotesque tiger is seen disporting in strange attitudes ([Pl. xxiii].). Exotic birds, singularly ill-drawn, are sometimes seen, but individual flowers are introduced with great decorative feeling—witness the sprig of poppy, a rare flower in Japanese art, on a plate in the British Museum. There is a non-Japanese element in the design which seems to hamper the native artist, but whether this element is to be sought in Holland or in Korea—or perhaps in a degree in both—is quite uncertain.[119] As for the enamel colours employed, the most important point is the use of a blue enamel over the glaze. This colour is freely employed in combination with the usual opaque red. The other colours, more sparingly used, are a green of emerald tint, a pale yellow, and a poorish purple. The full command of a fine-coloured blue enamel at so early a date is interesting. In the earlier Chinese examples this colour is poor, and the enamel is apt to chip off. On a few rare pieces of this Kakiyemon porcelain we see the blue applied under the glaze, and there is one specimen in the British Museum on which the two methods are combined. We rarely come upon specimens of this ware in Japan. In China, at one time, it was copied for exportation, and Dr. Bushell thinks that the porcelain classed as Tung-yang-tsai or ‘Japanese colours,’ in the time of Kang-he, is of this class. A large octagonal jar at South Kensington, somewhat crudely decorated in the Kakiyemon style, which came from Persia, may possibly be of Chinese origin. There is, at any rate, no doubt that this is the ware known, perhaps two hundred years ago, in France as the première qualité colorée, and in England and Germany as ‘old East Indian,’ It was reserved for Jacquemart to class it as Korean. It is, however, remarkable that in neither the Japanese nor the Dutch records of the time do we find any notice of a decoration at all resembling that found on this ware. Any hint that is given from these sources would apply much better to the class of porcelain that we have next to describe. In later chapters we shall see that the important position given to this Kakiyemon porcelain by our ancestors is reflected in the decoration applied to more than one of the early wares of Europe.

Imari or Old Japan.—The many kilns that sprung up in the province of Hizen during the

PLATE XXIV. 1. CHINESE. 2. JAPANESE.

course of the seventeenth century, along the slope of the hills that produced both the china-stone and the china-clay, were chiefly occupied in making blue and white porcelain, the sometsuke or ‘dyed’ ware of the Japanese, and this, we may add, is still the case.

The underglaze blue indeed has always remained the dominant element in the Imari porcelain, and to judge by the older pieces the employment of other colours crept in gradually. This blue is generally of a peculiar dark lavender or slaty tint, and with the addition to it of a little gilding we obtain already the general effect of the ‘old Japan’ decoration. When to the blue and gold was added an opaque iron-red (from this pigment the Japanese succeeded in obtaining a great variety of fine tints), we attain to a scheme of decoration which, at first sight, gives the impression of being built up with a full palette of colours; this is the typical nishiki-de or ‘brocaded’ ware of the Japanese ([Pl. i].). Indeed in many of the finest specimens we find nothing beyond these three colours—blue, red, and gold. But the blue, derived from the native ore, the concretionary ‘wad,’ containing generally more manganese than cobalt, is often wholly or in part replaced as the dominant colour by a glossy black painted over the glaze, and this, too, in specimens with some claims to antiquity. The other colours of the Chinese ‘pentad,’ the green, the yellow, and the purple, generally occupy quite subordinate positions. It is to be noted that in this ware we never find the blue applied as an enamel over the glaze.

It would be a mistake to regard the whole series of Imari enamelled porcelain as made only for exportation. It is true that the large vases and plates with the well-known effective but somewhat overloaded decoration are not found in Japan, although such pieces have been made at Arita for the last two hundred years for exportation from Nagasaki; but the more quietly decorated ware of Imari, in endless forms and with decoration of the most varied kind, has long been in general domestic use, and many smaller pieces of great artistic beauty have been lately obtained from Japanese collections.[120]

In fact, the early enamelled wares of Imari are recognised by the Japanese as the fons et origo of most of the decorated porcelain, to say nothing of the later pottery, of their country. We have seen how our ‘old Japan’ group started from a slight modification of the blue and white, but we must find place also for an early ware decorated in five colours, somewhat in the Wan-li style. Of this ware but few pieces survive. The tradition, however, was carried on at Kutani and at many of the Kioto kilns in the eighteenth century.

Late in the seventeenth century the Kizayemon family obtained the privilege of supplying the porcelain, decorated with cranes and chrysanthemums, for the personal use of the Mikado, and at the present day a member of this family is said to still claim the right of purveying to the imperial court. It is to one of these Kizayemons, but not until the year 1770, that the merit of the invention of seggars for holding the porcelain in the kiln is given by the Japanese. It would seem that before that date no such protection was given. That such a claim should be made shows how completely Japan at this time was shut out from the rest of the world.