Porcelain

by Edward Dillon

The materials of the porcelain made in Hizen were obtained originally from the famous ‘Hill of Springs‘—Idzumi Yama—which rises behind the town of Arita. Of late years, however, large quantities of clay and stone have been brought from the island of Amakusa, which lies to the south. It is from the products of decomposition of a volcanic rock, a kind of quartz-trachyte, that these materials are obtained, not from a true granitic rock as in Owari[121] and in most other seats of porcelain manufacture all over the world.[122]

In the neighbourhood of Arita the raw materials lie conveniently at hand; and in the Japanese accounts there is no definite reference to two distinct elements in the constitution of the paste. However, that something corresponding to our china-stone is made use of, is shown by the importance attached to the methods by which the stone is reduced to powder. The primitive stamping-mill, worked by a long lever of wood, moved either by the foot of a coolie or by a simple hydraulic arrangement, has long been employed for pounding the stone, and the hills around Arita re-echo with the thuds of these mills.

The potter’s wheel plays here a larger part than in China, and the Japanese are exceptionally skilful throwers. Still, notwithstanding some native statements to the contrary, the use of moulds either of wood or of terra-cotta has long been known—witness the old Kakiyemon porcelain.

We now come to the most important departure from the Chinese procedure. In Japan, the ware (as is, indeed, universally the case in Europe) receives a preliminary baking in a specially constructed biscuit kiln before the application of the glaze. The adoption of this practice would seem to point to a greater tenderness in the raw clay.

The glaze (Japanese kusuri—‘medicine‘) is prepared by mixing the finely powdered china-stone with the ashes of certain kinds of wood. The ashes from the bark of the usu-tree (Distylium racemosum) are especially in request for this purpose, and it is certainly remarkable that these ashes contain nearly 40 per cent. of lime, the element that is conspicuous by its absence from the paste.

The furnaces in which the principal firing takes place are of a bee-hive shape: they are arranged in rows of from five to ten hearths placed by preference on the slope of a hill, so that each succeeding hearth rises two or three feet above its neighbour. This plan is probably a modification of the old Ming type of furnace, and the system, it is said, was introduced from Korea.

The use of seggars appears never to have become general, and this is probably the reason why the marks of ‘crow’s-feet’ and other kinds of struts, used to support the vessel in the kiln, are often conspicuous on the base of the larger pieces.

Neither in their glazes nor for their enamels have the Japanese ever made use of any colours unknown to the Chinese, nor until quite recent times have they paid much attention to single glazes. There is, however, one important exception to this last statement, in the Sei-ji or celadon ware, which with them has always been the ideal of classical perfection, and which they have imitated with varied success. For their reds they have always been confined to pigments derived from iron, but with these opaque intractable materials they have obtained a great variety of effects, especially by means of delicate gradations of strength. In the case of the blue under the glaze, the Japanese have never attained to the mastery of their teachers: there is very commonly a tendency of the colour to run, and a bluish tint is thereby given to the white ground; the blue, moreover, on the older specimens, is generally dull, and in modern times often crude and unpleasant.

The shapes and uses of Japanese porcelain start, for the most part, from Chinese models of Ming times, but there are a few forms that are not found in China. The hi-bachi or fire-bowl, though more commonly of bronze, we sometimes find made of celadon or of blue and white porcelain; the kôrô or incense-burner, with a cover of pierced metal, is a form characteristic of Japan; and the more elaborate choshi-buro or ‘clove-bath’ is, I think, peculiar to the country; so, too, are both the saké-bottle of cylindrical or square section, with a curved lip for pouring, and the little cups, in sets of three, often of egg-shell ware, from which the saké is drunk. The use of the miniature teapot, in which the better sort of tea is infused, is again confined to Japan; but these little kibisho, unlike the vessels for powdered tea used in the Cha-no-yu, have not, I think, been long in fashion.

We have described the three kinds of porcelain made in Hizen for exportation to Europe, and we have seen that by the middle of the seventeenth century this commerce, in the hands of the Dutch, and to some extent of the Chinese, had already attained large proportions. Before turning to the kilns that sprung up in other parts of Japan during the eighteenth century—of these the origin in every case can be traced back directly or indirectly to the early Hizen factories—we must say a word about some other varieties of porcelain made in the same neighbourhood, but not destined for foreign use.