PORCELAIN AND FAIENCE.
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the manufacture in materials, form and ornamentation. There is an unceasing variety, and, apparently, no end of surprises in store for amateurs and collectors. But it is not in porcelain alone that the Japanese potters attain excellence and variety. They produce faience and ware resembling the finer sorts of terra-cotta, plain and enamelled. The exquisitely decorated faience of Satsuma was a surprise to connoisseurs at Paris, in 1867. It was admired in London, at the Exhibition in 1871, and appeared in still greater variety of forms and decoration at Vienna. The potters seem also to be copying European "masters,” for they are making this ware into forms to suit foreigners. Certain it is that, as the demand for any one of these varieties of ware increases and large orders have to be filled, the care and detailed labor diminishes, and we lose that painstaking and exquisite finish which is freely bestowed on a few select objects. Thus it is that older specimens of ware are generally the most desirable. The same is true of the metal work and the ivory carvings. Quality must be sacrificed to quantity.
The Japanese Commission, however, who had the responsibility of securing a proper representation, made judicious selections and placed some of the choicest, as well as the more ordinary objects, before the jury.
The list includes vases, white and blue, in red color, and in the deservedly admired celadon green ; perforated work, enamelling in relief, egg-shell ware, monochromatic and polychromatic decoration, decoration with flowers and figures, and with laquer and gold. There were not only vases, but plates, bowls, sackie-bottles, sackie-cups and tea-pots in great variet}’; tiles, large decorated slabs, a fire-place and mantel, and dinner, breakfast and tea services, after European patterns.
The Japanese porcelain, it is well known, is the hard, or pâte dur variety. It is, in general, highly vitreous, compact and hard, but is tough and resists heat well.
Amongst the ’ many porcelain-making establishments in Japan, those of Sai-kio, Inari, Kutani, Owari* and Awadji,
* Owari is in the Second District, Tokaido, and Awadji in the Seventh District, Nankaido.
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