CHAPTERXIIIFROM EAST TO WEST

PLATE XXIII.JAPANESE, KAKIYEMON ENAMELLED WARE

It may indeed be said that it was in the separation, and in the definite attribution to Japan, of these two groups, that the first step was made towards a scientific classification of Oriental porcelain, and for this work we are chiefly indebted to the labours of the late Sir A. W. Franks. We will first deal with what may on the whole be regarded as the oldest group.

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 (JapaneseSho-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]Asfor the enamel colours employed, the most important point is the use of a blue enamelover 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 asTung-yang-tsaior ‘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 thepremière 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, thesometsukeor ‘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 typicalnishiki-deor ‘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 enameloverthe 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 morequietly 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 thefons et origoof 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.

And here we may point out how self-contained was the development of Japanese porcelain during the palmy days of the Tokugawarégime(say from 1650 to 1850). As in the case of the kindred arts of metalware and lacquer, any European influence was quite of a casual and what we may call fanciful nature; while the new methods of decoration that came into use in

Plate XXV.Japanese. Imari ware.

Plate XXV.

Japanese. Imari ware.

China in the eighteenth century were never recognised or copied, even if they were known. What imitation there was of China was confined to the copying of Ming types; the Manchus, in fact, were never acknowledged by the Japanese, and their arts were under a taboo almost as strict as that applied to the civilisation of the West. No better instance of this conservatism could be given than the fact that the use of gold as a source of a red pigment, the basis of thefamille rosein China, appears to have been unknown until the beginning of the nineteenth century, and even then therouge-d’orwas but sparingly applied. On the other hand, the Chinese were always eager, in the interest of trade, to copy the wares exported from Nagasaki, and we shall see later on what an influence the various products of the Hizen kilns had upon the porcelain of Europe.

These, then, were practically the only kinds of Japanese ceramic ware known in Europe until the opening of the country in our days—the blue and white orsometsuke, the ‘old Japan’ ornishiki-de, and the peculiar type which we have classed as Kakiyemon. To this list we should perhaps add the plain white ware, much of which was subsequently decorated in Europe.

These wares were all of them made in the kilns near Arita, nor do they exhaust the products of even that district. But during the eighteenth century the manufacture of porcelain spread to other parts of Japan where porcelain was made exclusively for home consumption. Many of these kilns were established under princely patronage, some in the very gardens of the feudal lord, while a special interest is given to others by their association with certain skilled potters and their descendants, whose names, in opposition to what we found was the practice in China, we can thus connect with the wares.

But we will first say something about the composition and the processes of manufacture of the porcelain of Japan, dwelling, however, only on those few points where we find divergences from the practices obtaining in China.

In the first place, then, as to the composition of the paste. To judge from the few trustworthy analyses of Imari ware that have been made, the paste would seem to be of a very abnormal type; the amount of silica—70 to 74 per cent.—is quite unusual; there is an almost total absence of lime, so important a constituent of Chinese porcelain; while we find from 4 to 5 per cent. of the alkalis. But, in place of the potash found in the wares of China, in the Japanese paste the prevailing alkali is invariably soda.

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 primitivestamping-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 (Japanesekusuri—‘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 tosupport 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 theSei-jior 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. Thehi-bachior fire-bowl, though more commonly of bronze, we sometimes find made of celadon or of blue and white porcelain; thekôrôor incense-burner, with a cover of pierced metal, is a form characteristic of Japan; and the more elaboratechoshi-buroor ‘clove-bath’ is, I think, peculiar to the country; so, too, are both thesaké-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 thesakéis drunk. The use of the miniature teapot, in which the better sort of tea is infused, is again confined to Japan; but these littlekibisho, unlike the vessels for powdered tea used in theCha-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.

The village or town of Arita, of which the better-known Imari is the port, lies about fifty miles to the north-east of Nagasaki, and it may almost be regarded as the King-te-chen of Japan. The clay and china-stone used there is now brought, for the most part, from the adjacent islands, from Hirado, from Amakusa, and even from the more remote Goto islands. By a combination of some of the most important potters of the district, and with the assistance of some wealthy merchants, a company, theKoransha, was formed some twenty-five years ago,[123]and an attempt was made to keep up the quality of the porcelain produced, at least from a technical point of view. It was certainly time for some such effort to be made, for about that period, just after the Philadelphia Exhibition, the arts of Japan reached perhaps their nadir.

Mikôchi or Hirado Ware.—It was with a somewhat similar object that, long before this—about the middle of the eighteenth century—the feudal lord of Hirado had taken some of the kilns near Arita under his patronage, and had also attempted to regulate the wasteful and careless way in which the materials werequarried on the slopes of Idzumi Yama. This was the origin of the beautiful Mikôchi (Mi-ka-uchi) ware, which was at first produced only for the use of the prince and of his friends, or for presentation to the Shogun.

To understand the important influence of this aristocratic patronage upon the scattered kilns of Japan (only a few of these, indeed, produced porcelain), I cannot do better than quote the words of Captain Brinkley, perhaps our first authority on Japanese ceramics: ‘During the two centuries that represent the golden age of Japanese ceramic art, that is to say, from 1645 to 1845, every factory of any importance was under the direct patronage either of the nobleman in whose fief it lay, or of some wealthy amateur whose whole business in life was comprised in the cultivation of theCha-no-yu. The wares produced, if they did not represent the independent efforts of artists seeking to achieve or maintain celebrity, were undertaken in compliance with the orders of the workman’s liege lord, or of some other exalted personage. Considerations of cost were entirely set aside, no expenditure of time and toil were deemed excessive, and the slightest blemish sufficed to secure the condemnation of the piece.’ All these conditions were swept away by the revolution of 1868 and by the opening of the country to foreigners. ‘Codes of subtle æsthetics and criticisms of exacting amateurs had no longer to be considered, but in their stead the artist found himself confronted by the Western market with all its elements of sordid haste and superficial judgment.’

To return to the Mikôchi porcelain, this Hirado ware, for it was known also by that name, produced at the prince’s kilns, six miles to the south of Arita, was for more than a hundred years regarded as thene plus ultraamong Japanese porcelain, and its value was enhanced by the fact that the ware never found its way into commerce. In thesous couverteblue it was sought toimitate the paler type of the old Ming ware. The best-known examples of this blue decoration are seen on the little cups delicately painted with Chinese boys at play under pine-trees—the more the boys the better the ware, it is said. Careful manipulation of the clay and finish of surface has never been carried to a higher point than in the varieties of this porcelain worked with pierced patterns and ornaments in relief, so prized by Japanese collectors. On these we find, in addition to the blue, a peculiar tint of pale brown. Of this coloured ware there are some good specimens at South Kensington.

Ôkôchi or Nabeshima Ware.—The same high technical finish has been attained in the Ôkôchi porcelain made at the village of that name (Ô-kawa-uchi) three miles to the north of Arita. The kilns here were patronised by the Nabeshima princes, who belonged to one of the greatest feudal families of old Japan. In this case also, the small highly finished pieces were destined for presents only and were never sold. This ware is generally to be identified by the comb-like pattern (JapaneseKushi-ki), painted in blue round the base of the cups and bowls.[124]Like the little Chinese boys of the Mikôchi ware, this pattern is often seen on very inferior ware of quite modern manufacture. A peculiar kind of finely crackled celadon was also made at Ôkôchi.

In the Arita district are many other factories, some of which, as those at Matsugawa, have at times produced excellent ware. Of most of these private kilns, however, the chief outturn has always been confined to the blue and whitesometsukefor domestic use.

We have now to follow the steps by which the knowledge of porcelain was carried from the westernisland to other parts of Japan. We had better pass at once to the Kioto kilns, for although the manufacture of porcelain was not introduced at the old capital so early as at some other places in the main island, yet the skill of its artist potters and their connection with the imperial court led, in the course of the eighteenth century, to the spread of their influence in every direction.

Kioto was already in the sixteenth century the seat of more than one ceramic industry, but it was not so much the problem of the materials for a true porcelain, as the questions connected with the coloured enamels lately brought over from the West, that excited the curiosity of the Kioto potter at this time. The story goes that one Aoyama Koyemon (I quote again fromThe Chrysanthemum, April 1883), who came to Kioto from the porcelain district of Hizen, to obtain orders for the new enamelled ware, allowed the secret of its manufacture to be wormed out of him by a crafty Kioto dealer, and that for this breach of trust the wretched ‘traveller’ was crucified by his liege lord on his return to Arita. This occurred just before the death of the great ceramic artist Ninsei (about 1660), and the old potter at once obtained the knowledge of the new enamelling process from the above-mentioned crockery merchant. This man, we should add—the dealer—is said to have gone mad when he heard the dreadful fate of his friend Koyemon—a fate for which he was in so large a measure responsible. Such stories as this, and there are other similar ones in the annals of Japanese ceramics, call to mind the adventures of the experts of the eighteenth century, who trafficked with the German princes in thearcanaof the newly introduced porcelain, but for these German experts the penalties for breach of confidence were not of so severe a nature.

Nomomura Ninsei is generally held to be the greatest ceramic artist that Japan has produced. Thedecorated stoneware and pottery that he turned out late in life may be regarded as the common source from which the wares produced in the two main groups of kilns in the neighbourhood of Kioto took their origin. With one of these groups, with the wares produced in the factories around Awata, we are not concerned here, for no porcelain was ever produced in that suburb of Kioto. But to the other group of kilns, called after the beautiful temple of Kiyomidzu, to the north of Kioto, belong some of the most artistic specimens of porcelain in our collections. It was here that this somewhat uncongenial material was forced for the first time to adapt itself to the fanciful genius of the people. It was to this district that the great original artist Kenzan, the brother of the still more famous Ogata Korin, came towards the end of the seventeenth century. It is true that little of this artist’s work is executed in a true porcelain, but his picturesque signature, scrawled in black, is sometimes found on the so-called more noble ware (Pl. B.21). Like his brother Korin, Kenzan obtained his effects by the simplest means, sometimes by mere patches of colour cunningly distributed over the surface. The work of both these men has of late found many admirers and imitators in France.

It was not till the beginning of the eighteenth century that we have any definite record of the manufacture of porcelain in Kioto. About that time Yeisen devoted himself to the imitation of Chinese celadon. If we are to find any common note in the wares produced in the various Kioto potteries, it would be in a certain studied rudeness both in shape and decoration, the very opposite of the delicately finished products of the Hizen kilns. The rare pieces of Ming porcelain with coloured decoration were eagerly sought for and copied, not in a slavish way, but rather so as to catch the spirit of their design. In fact these Japanese copies might be made to throw some light on that rather obscuresubject, the origin of enamel decoration in China in the days of the later Ming emperors.

An apparently early class of Chinese enamelled ware, somewhat rudely painted with a predominant iron red combined with a subordinate green, was a great favourite with the Kioto potters, but we find also copies of the Wan-li ‘pentad,’ the designs in this case sparely scattered over the ground, generally in formal patterns of a textile type. The blue and purple ware with ribbedcloisonswhich the Japanese associate with their mysterious land of Kochi was also in favour, but at Kioto, I think, this ware was not copied in porcelain. So of the blue and white made at this time at Kiyomidzu, it is distinguished from both the Hizen and the Seto wares by a certain rudeness in the shape and decoration, a character preserved by a great deal of thesometsukestill made in this district.

Quite a different spirit was, however, brought in by Zengoro Riyozen, the tenth descendant of a famous family of potters. This Zengoro was a potter of universal genius, the foremost ceramic artist indeed of the peaceful and luxurious period at the beginning of the nineteenth century, when the Tokugawa Shogun at Tokiyo set an example of an extravagant expenditure and brilliant display which was only too readily followed at the courts of the great feudal nobles. In the art work of that time, in spite of the unsurpassed perfection of execution and love of gorgeous decoration, we can already trace the signs of a coming decay. Zengoro, besides reviving with some success the deep sapphire blue,sous couverte, of Ming times, succeeded in producing from an iron-oxide a red ground which vied with the famous coral reds of the previous century in China. But it was rather the Ming red,sous couverte, that made from ‘powdered rubies of the West,’ that he professed to copy. Over the red ground of his plates and little bowls he painted his design in gold of thefinest quality, and on the white ground of the inside placed a scant decoration of his under-glaze sapphire blue. Some of these dainty little cups are shown in a table-case in the British Museum, but if we compare them with the exquisite Ming bowls of a deep red derived from copper in the same collection, the difference of the quality of the two tints is at once apparent. As, however, it was a matter ofconvenanceto go back to a Ming model, it was with the latter ware that Zengoro’s work was compared. It was for his success in this kind of decoration (produced about the years 1806-1817) that the great Kioto potter received from his patron, the prince of Kishiu, a seal with the characteryeiraku, or reading in modern ChineseYung-lo, the name of the Ming emperor (1402-24) with whom the red copper glaze is traditionally associated (Pl. B.22).[125]This, then, is the origin of the nameYeiraku kinrandefor the ‘gold brocade’ ware of Zengoro. At a later time this form of decoration was carried by Zengoro’s son to Kaga, where in a debased form it became characteristic of a ware with which our markets were at one time flooded.

Kishiu Ware.—Thiskinrande, however, is not the only kind of porcelain with which the name of this protean artist is associated. Although the name Yeiraku given him by the Prince Nariyuki is generally connected with his brilliant red and gold ware, it was a porcelain of quite another kind that our Zengoro the tenth, or perhaps his son Hozen, the eleventh of the family, turned out from the kilns that had been erected bythat prince in the garden (theÔ-niwa) of his palace near Wakayama. The Japanese tell us that this well-known Ô-niwa or Kishiu ware was made in imitation of a kind of porcelain or fayence brought long ago from Kochi, a name generally rendered as Cochin-China, in any case a country to the south of China. We have seen grounds for associating thisÔ-niwa yakirather with an early type of Chinese polychrome ware, painted on the biscuit with glazes of three or perhaps four colours. In any case, in the Japanese ware the turquoise, the purple, and the straw-coloured yellow (this last quite subordinate) are applied in a similar fashion, and this is indeed practically the only Japanese ware on which we find the turquoise colour that has played so important a part in other countries. It is here the most important colour of the triad, but occasionally we find it replaced by a deep, rich green. On this Kishiu or Ô-niwa ware, known also to the Japanese asKairakufrom another seal used by Zengoro (Pl. B.20), the decoration is formed by ribs or lines which separate the surface into shallowcloisons. In other cases the turquoise or the aubergine purple is found alone as a monochrome glaze.

Very few, however, of the large vases of this ware that have been exported of late years to Europe, and especially to America (where the turquoise blue has always been a favourite, as in the case of Chinese porcelain), can have come from the kilns in the ‘prince’s garden.’ This ware has, indeed, for some time since, been imitated at many other places—at Tokiyo, and since 1870 especially at Kobe, where vast quantities have been manufactured for exportation. These copies have gone through the stages of degradation in design and colour that usually accompany a large commercial production.

Another famous potter, Mokubei, who worked at Kioto about the same time, is said to have made greatimprovements in the moulds employed by him, especially in those used for copying old Chinese pieces. But we certainly cannot accept the statement that he was the first potter in Japan to use moulds. This same Mokubei is said to have copied the richly glazed stoneware of Kochi, a ware that had long been prized by the Japanese, and to which, or rather to the kindred porcelain, we have already referred. It is described as a hard pottery, with archaic moulded decorations, coated with lustrous glazes of green, purple, yellow, and golden-bronze. Mokubei also worked for the prince of Kishiu, and it would be interesting to know what relation, if any, he had with Zengoro and his Ô-niwa yaki.[126]

Sanda Celadon.—The kilns set up at Sanda, a small town to the north-west of Osaka, by the feudal lord of the district, have acquired in Japan a great name on account of the celadon ware there made. ThisSanda-seijiwas first produced at the end of the seventeenth century, and followed more closely the famous old heavy wares of Lung-chuan than did the more delicately finished celadon porcelain made about the same time at Ôkôchi in Hizen. In addition to these wares, the Japanese lay claim to an ancient celadon of native manufacture, and much ink has been spilt in Japan upon the question of the origin of certain archaic pieces preserved in temples and private collections. The bulk of the Sanda celadon, we should say, is a solid useful ware with small artistic pretensions.

The Wares of Owari and Mino.—If, leaving Kioto, we take the old high-road to Yedo—the Tokaido—we pass through a succession of villages where the local wares are displayed in the stalls lining the route. Some of this pottery is not without merit, and historicalassociations give interest to more than one variety. But it is not till we have passed Nagoya, a large industrial town at the head of the Gulf of Owari, that we enter a true porcelain district—the only district in Japan that has vied with Hizen in the production of porcelain for domestic use and for exportation. Not far off is the village of Seto, the home of Toshiro; it was here that on his return from China, early in the thirteenth century, he set up the first kiln that produced in Japan a ware with any claims to artistic merit. But, as we have said at the beginning of this chapter, the ware made by Toshiro was no true porcelain, although the expressionSeto-mono, derived from his native village, is used rather for porcelain than for other kinds of pottery. The term is, in fact, about equivalent to our word ‘china.’

It was not till nearly six hundred years after Toshiro’s day that the village of Seto again became prominent, when in the year 1807 the art of making porcelain was, after many difficulties, successfully introduced from Hizen. This was thanks to the energy of the potter Tamakichi, who ventured a journey to Hizen to find out the secrets of the manufacture. As a reward for his services the privilege of wearing two swords and the rights of asamuraiwere granted to Tamakichi by the lord of Owari. Here again we find the new industry established under the fostering care of the local prince.

Over a wide district, more especially to the east on the borders of the province of Mikawa, the decomposing granite furnishes an excellent raw material, and centres for the manufacture of porcelain have sprung up sporadically over a tract stretching away to the north, as far as the province of Mino. But most of these kilns have never produced anything better than a common blue and white ware.

In composition the paste of the Owari porcelain is much closer to the normal type than that of the Hizen wares (see note, p. 190). Of late years the Owari pottershave succeeded in turning out pieces of unprecedented size, in the shape especially of dishes and of slabs for the tops of tables. From the artistic side, however, little can be said in favour of this ware: the blue is generally crude in quality, often resembling that found on the commoner European porcelain of later days.

Another art was revived some years ago in the neighbourhood of Nagoya, the chief town of this district—I mean that of enamelling in metalliccloisons(theShipô, or ‘seven treasures’ of the Japanese), and of late years the two industries have been combined by applying the metalliccloisonsand the enamel to the surface of porcelain. A similar ware has also been made at Kioto, but in this case the soft fayence of Awata has been used as a base. Enormous quantities of both these varieties ofcloisonnéhave been brought to Europe, and when we consider the amount of skilled labour required in the manufacture, we can only marvel at the prices for which this ware is retailed in London.

Much of the cheap Japanese blue and white sold in Europe comes from this Owari district, but of late years more ambitious things have been attempted there—monochrome glazes of thegrand feu, including a curious variety offlambéware with a chocolate-coloured ground.

Kutani Ware.—There only remains one important centre of porcelain manufacture for us to describe. This lies far away among the mountains that skirt the western coast of Japan. The feudal lords of that country, however, the princes of Kaga, were reputed to be the most wealthy of all the daimios of Japan. A junior branch of this family, the lords of Daichoji, as early as the first half of the seventeenth century established a kiln at the mountain village of Kutani. In the year 1660 an emissary was despatched to Hizen to spy out the land and learn what he could of the new processes lately introduced there. The story of his difficulties is onlyanother version of that told of Tamakichi, the Seto potter. After many adventures, abandoning the wife that he had been forced to marry at Arita and the child he had had by her, he returned to Kaga, equipped with the desired information and experience. He succeeded in making a true porcelain with a white ground, decorated in a style founded, it is said, both on the contemporary Hizen ware and on the enamelled stoneware of Kochi. Morikaga, a famous artist of Kioto, was retained to furnish designs for the decoration. We have in the British Museum a spherical vase, painted in the five colours with a series of spirited figures, which may well date from that time (Pl. xxvi.). Examples of this period are rare, but some of the old drug-pots, jealously guarded by their owners, that were still, a few years ago, to be seen in the druggists’ and herbalists’ shops of Osaka and Sakai, may perhaps be traced back to the potters of the seventeenth century, either those of Kaga or those of Hizen. At this time, in fact, the Kaga ware had hardly differentiated itself from that of the parent province. It was not till the beginning of the eighteenth century that the typical Kutani ware, one of the most original and decorative ever turned out from Japanese kilns, was produced.

On a greyish paste, hardly to be reckoned as porcelain, the lustrous, full-bodied enamels, almost unctuous in quality, are laid with a full brush. The whole surface is generally covered, and a dark, juicy green is the prevailing colour, over which a design of black lines is drawn. Next in importance among the enamels there comes first purple, then a heavy blue enamel which somewhat clashes with the other colours, and finally a full-toned yellow. It would seem from Japanese accounts that this kind of ware was not made after 1730, when there ensued a period of decay, but it is difficult to believe the statement that the manufacture was not revived till 1810. The picturesquely decorated bowls

PLATE XXVI.JAPANESE, KAGA WARE

and plates showing the greyish ground are probably later than those wholly covered with the green enamel, and it might be possible to trace the date of introduction of fresh means of decoration—gilding skilfully and boldly applied or the use of white enamel in relief, especially for the petals of flowers. Later, but still on ware of fine decorative effect, we find these white petals tinged with pink, and this apparently is the earliest appearance of therouge d’oramong Japanese enamels.

When did this new colour come in, and from what source? We may perhaps associate its first use with the wonderful period, early in the nineteenth century, of which we have already spoken, when all the restraints to which the Japanese artist had been so long subjected were removed, the crabbed critic with his tradition of Ming times was silenced, and a free rein at length given to native exuberance in the use of gay colours and naturalistic designs. But this was the end; as in the other arts, a period of decline set in before the middle of the century, a decline that was accelerated, but not first originated, by the throwing open of the country to European influences a few years later.

With the Kutani potter, the beginning of the end seems to have coincided with the introduction of the iron-red and gold decoration. This was brought about when the assistance of one of the Zengoro family, Zengoro the eleventh or Hozen, probably, was obtained from Kioto. At the same time the brilliant decoration in enamel colours was still carried on, often enough with happy effect, and this was kept up to quite a late period. In these latter days the use of a true white porcelain again became prevalent—indeed the materials are at the present day brought from Amakusa and other islands off the coast of Hizen.

There are two marks that have always been associated with the Kaga ware—first, the character for Kutani, the ‘Nine Valleys,’ the name of the little mountainvillage where the ware was first made; second, the Chinese wordFu(JapaneseFuku), meaning ‘prosperity’ or ‘wealth,’ written in the seal character. We find this last mark painted in black on the back of the old pieces covered with a green glaze (Pl. B. 23).

In our account of Japanese porcelain we have been hampered by the restrictions imposed by our subject. Among Japanese ceramic products there is a big middle class, what we have called kaolinic stoneware. Wares of this kind, when made in neighbouring kilns and differing in their decoration in no way from what may be classed as true porcelain—and this is the case in the pottery districts of Kaga and around Kioto—have naturally found their way within our limits. Other kinds quite as near to true porcelain, such as the picturesque fayence of Inuyama or many of the old Raku wares, have remained unmentioned. The temptation to overstep the line has been great, inasmuch as so many of the wares showing originality and real artistic merit lie distinctly on the further side.

We may say finally that a closer acquaintance with Japanese ceramics will confirm what may be observed in the case of other branches of Japanese art—in their painting, for example, and in their lacquer-ware. I mean the important part played by the critic, using that term in a wide sense, in restraining the native exuberance of the artist. The first tendency of the European connoisseur is to regret the hampering influence of Chinese tradition and the restrictions imposed upon all new developments. But when these influences have for a time been removed, the facile productiveness of the Japanese artist has always tended to land him in that pretty and over-decorated style that has found its way into middle-class drawing-rooms at home. We find a tendency to this unrestrained decoration and reckless association of colours creeping into favour long

PLATE XXVII.JAPANESE, KAGA WARE

before the opening of the country. Indeed, centuries ago at Kioto, and even perhaps in the old Nara days, a somewhat similar love of the trifling and effeminate may be recognised now and again. The services rendered by the severe traditions of the old Chinese schools of the Tang and Sung dynasties, and by the ascetic spirit of theCha-no-yuin keeping within bounds the native tendency to luxuriant overgrowth, must not be overlooked. When these influences were removed, the arts soon ran to seed.

WE have now followed the steps by which the dependants and the neighbours of the ‘Middle Kingdom’ to the North, the East and the South, acquired the essentially Chinese art of the manufacture of porcelain. The next stage in our history brings us at one step to Europe. Before making this stride of more than a thousand leagues from Japan to Central Germany, it will be convenient to bring together some of the scattered references to the porcelain of China that have been laboriously disinterred from the works of the Arab and Christian writers of the Middle Ages, and to compare these statements with the scant account of the trade with Western lands to be found in the Chinese books of that time. We shall then trace rapidly the history of the stages by which the European nations became better acquainted with the porcelain of the Far East so as finally to master the secret of the manufacture.

For the earlier period we are dependent almost entirely upon Arab and Chinese sources. The love of the marvellous, the spirit of Sindbad the Sailor, has to be discounted in the first, and we have seen what reservations we have to make in accepting the statements of the latter.

There is no doubt that it is in the extraordinary development of trade that followed the wave of Arabconquest in the seventh century that we must find the first possibilities of direct communication with the Far East. The great advance made by China in the early and palmy days of the Tang dynasty (618-907) no doubt opened the way for this intercourse. At that time China was in possession of a civilisation in many respects as advanced as that to be found either at Constantinople or at Bagdad.

As early as the year 700 of our era we find mention of a foreign settlement at Canton, so that that town can claim a longer record than any other Chinese port. But it was rather at Khanfu, as the Arabs called Hangchow (or rather its port), the Kinsai of Marco Polo, that, in the time of the next dynasty, the Sung (960-1279), the chief trade was carried on. Thus we find that Edrisi, who wrote a work on geography (c.1153) for Roger, the Norman king of Sicily, is eloquent upon the riches of this port of Khanfu and the neighbouring town Susak (perhaps Suchow), ‘where they make an unequalled kind of porcelain calledghazarby the Chinese.’

At this time, though many Arab merchants were settled at the ports of Canton, Zaitun, and Kinsai, the bulk of the commerce, it would seem, was carried on in the larger and stronger junks of the Chinese, and the best account that we have of the intercourse of China with foreign countries is to be found in the report on external trade, written by Chao Ju-kua, early in the thirteenth century.[127]This Chao was ‘inspector of foreign shipping’ at Chüan-chou Fu, a town on the coast of Fukien, which may perhaps be identified with the Zaitun of Marco Polo. In any case it was, at that time, the principal starting-point for foreign commerce. We have in his report a curious account of the trade with Bruni, on the north-west coast of Borneo, anisland with which the Chinese had already had some intercourse for several centuries, and ‘green porcelain’ is mentioned by him in the list of the merchandise there imported.

We need not dwell here on the well-known passion of the Dyaks of Borneo for celadon porcelain, and the big prices that they are prepared to give for fine old pieces (Cf.Bock,The Head Hunters of Borneo, p. 197seq.). Of the specimens of celadon and other wares brought from this island we shall speak shortly. Modern travellers tell us that the larger jars, ‘decorated with lizards and serpents’ (probably the early smooth-skinned dragon of the Chinese), are preserved as heirlooms. Besides their medicinal value they are a complete protection from evil spirits for the house in which they are stored. From later Chinese writers (of the sixteenth century) we learn that these large jars were used in Borneo in place of coffins, and it is a significant fact that a similar mode of burial is still in use in Fukien, the district from which these vessels were exported, but not elsewhere in China.

To return to our Sung inspector of trade, as quoted by Dr. Hirth, Chao tells us that at the ports of Cambodja, of Annam, and of Java, the Chinese bartered both green and white porcelain against pepper and other local products. But at that time the great emporium for the Western trade was the port known to the Arabs as Sarbaya, the modern Palembang in the island of Sumatra. Here, or at Lambri, in the same island, the junks laid up for the winter, and in the spring the Chinese goods were carried further west to Quilon, on the Malabar coast of the Deccan, this time probably in Arab bottoms. The porcelain and the other Chinese exports were now distributed to the various lands with which the Arabs traded at that time. Chao Ju-kua, in this connection, mentions Guzerate, and an island that most probably can beidentified with Zanzibar. At any rate, at this last spot fragments of celadon porcelain have been discovered in recent days in association with Chinese ‘cash’ of the tenth and eleventh centuries.

There are scattered notices of this Sinico-Arab trade in the works of Arab geographers and travellers, from Edrisi to Ibn Batuta. The last writer, indeed, states that Chinese porcelain has found its way as far west as Morocco. It was a happy idea of the Director of the Ethnographical Museum, in the Zwinger at Dresden, to collect from every available quarter specimens of Chinese porcelain with the object of illustrating the wide distribution of the ware in early days, apart from and mostly previous to that brought about by European agencies. In this collection the heavy celadon or ‘martabani’ occupies, as we might expect, a prominent place, but the later enamelled wares, including even some special types that may be included under thefamille roseof the eighteenth century, have been found both in Cairo and in Siam. Here we see large, heavy celadon plates, with thick glaze of pea-soup colour, from the Celebes, from Mindanoa and Luzon in the Philippine group, from Ceram and from other islands of the further Indies. On some of these plates the glaze covers the whole foot, and the unglazed ring, of deep red colour, on the upper surface, points to a primitive method of support in the kiln similar to that formerly in use in Siam. Other celadon plates (there are some huge ones, nearly a yard in diameter, in the collection), differing little from those found in these southern islands, came on the one hand from Cairo, and on the other from Korea and from Japan. From Korea there are also specimens of a curious crackle-ware with brownish glaze and a rough decoration in blue, and from Java a figure of Kwan-yin of a native type, covered with a pale, almost white, celadon glaze. In the samecollection we find plates roughly decorated with red and green enamels, a style of decoration which may perhaps be traced back to the earlier enamels of Ming times. Examples of this type of ware—some at least appear to be of porcelain—have been found both in the Philippines and in Ceylon. To come down to more recent times, pieces decorated with large peony-flowers, enamelled with an opaque white tinted by therouge d’or, on a bright green ground of leaves, come from the Celebes, from Siam, and especially from Cairo.[128]

At Gotha, in the public museum, is a collection of Chinese porcelain brought together by the late Duke of Edinburgh. It is remarkable for the number of fine pieces of early celadon that it contains. As the unique collection of Lung-chuan, of Ko yao and of other Sung wares formed by Dr. Hirth, is now comprised in it, this is probably the most important assemblage of early Chinese porcelain in Europe. These two German collections, in the Zwinger at Dresden and at Gotha, complement and illustrate each other. But we have in England, scattered through our different museums and private collections, the materials for a series of at least equal interest—I mean as a commentary on the history of the spread of Chinese porcelain over the world, a subject to which we must now return.

In the early days of the Ming dynasty the commercial expeditions of the Chinese took on a more aggressive character. In the time of Yung-lo (1402-25) the eunuch Chêng-ho sailed with a fleet asfar as Ceylon, and exacted homage, so the Chinese records say, from the king of that island. In the next reign, that of Hsuan-te (1425-35), the same admiral conducted a more peaceful expedition to Hormus, at the entrance of the Persian Gulf, and in company with merchantmen from India, traded with the ports of the Red Sea, from Aden as far up as Jeddah. Both in Ceylon and at Jeddah (Tien-fong is perhaps rather Mecca itself) we find mention of green porcelain among the goods imported, and at this last port the Indian and Chinese merchants established their factories at the very centre of the Mohammedan world. (I follow the extracts from the Ming Annals given by Dr. Hirth.)

Still more important was the trade with Hormus and other ports of the Persian Gulf. We hear incidentally, at a later time, of a large fleet of Chinese junks at anchor in these waters. To us the Chinese trade with Persia is of special interest, for when, after a brief interval of Portuguese rule, Hormus fell into our hands, it was in a measure through the medium of the Persian ports, and of similar depôts and factories on the Indian coast (as, for instance, Surat) that we in England obtained our earliest specimens of Chinese porcelain.

And now we must take up another thread of our inquiry and return to the China of the thirteenth century, the China of Kublai Khan, the greatest of the Mongol rulers, as described in the book of the Venetian traveller Marco Polo. Here, in what is for us a classical passage, we find the first known instance of the use of the word porcelain. Marco Polo has been describing the wonders and riches of Zaitun, and he proceeds in his inconsequent way—we will quote first from the old French text, probably the earliest—‘Et sachiez que pres de ceste cité de Çayton a une autre cité qui a nom Tiunguy, là où l’en faitmoult d’escuelles et de pourcelainnes qui sont moult belles. Et en nul autre port on n’en fait, fors que en cestuy; et en y a l’en moult bon marchie’ (Pauthier,Marco Polo, chapter clvi.).

Translating from the later and more expanded Italian text, Colonel Yule renders the corresponding passage as follows: ‘Let me tell you that there is in this province a town called Tyunju, where they make vessels of porcelain of all sizes, the finest that can be imagined. They make it nowhere but in this city, and thence it is exported all over the world. Here it is abundant and very cheap, insomuch that for a Venice groat you can buy three dishes so fine that you could not imagine better.’ In the still later version of Ramusio, printed at Venice in 1579, we find one of the first mentions of the old fable that the porcelain earth was allowed to weather for two generations before being used. (See Yule,Marco Polo, vol. i. p. cxxii. and vol. ii. pp. 186 and 190.)

Confining ourselves to the old French version, the point to bear in mind is the use of the word ‘pourcelainnes’ in this sense as one familiar to the reader and requiring no explanation. And yet in the two other passages of Marco Polo’s book, where the word is found, it is used, and here too without further explanation, for the Cowry shells (Cypræa) that then, as now, took the place of money in certain markets of the East. There can be little doubt that the ware of which Marco Polo spoke was some kind of celadon, and Dr. Hirth’s identification of Tingui with Lung-chuan is perhaps more plausible than the rival claims of Tekkwa and King-te-chen.

Ibn Batuta, the Arab traveller, who wrote nearly fifty years later, says ‘porcelain is made nowhere in China except in the cities of Zaitun and Sinkalon (Canton).’ In this statement he is of course quite wide of the mark. Like Marco Polo, however, he wasstruck by the cheapness of the ware, and he mentions that it was exported as far as Maghreb (Morocco).

These ‘moult belles pourcelainnes,’ Marco Polo tells us, were to be found all over the world. He was probably speaking, as we have said, of a celadon ware, though it is possible that he may have seen the pure white translucent porcelain of Tingchou. Our first distinct notice of porcelain out of China is indeed of earlier date. In an Arab manuscript in theBibliothèque Nationale, treating of the life and exploits of Saladin, we are told that in the year 1171 that great Emir forwarded from Cairo to his feudal lord Nureddin, Sultan of Damascus, a present of forty pieces of Chinese porcelain, doubtless found among the treasures of the recently conquered Fatimite caliphs of Egypt.[129]We have every reason to believe that this store of porcelain, found in the palace of the heretic caliphs of ‘Babylon,’ can have consisted of nothing else but the much prized ‘martabani,’ of which such wonderful stories are told by the Arab and Persian writers.

The high estimation in which this ware was held in Persia at a later date is well brought out in the following quotation from Chardin, who was in Persia in 1672: ‘Everything in the king’s palace is of massive gold or porcelain. There is a kind of green porcelain so precious that one dish alone is worth 500 crowns. They say that this porcelain detects poison by changing colour, but that is a fable.[130]Its price arises from itsbeauty and the delicacy of its materials, which render it transparent, though above two crowns in thickness.’ Again, in one of the tales of theArabian Nights, we hear of six old slaves who bring in a salad in a huge basin of ‘martabani’ ware.

Fragments of porcelain, the fine white paste covered with a greyish green glaze, have been found in the rubbish-heaps both of Fostât or Old Cairo and of Rha (the Rhages of the book of Tobit), near Teheran, and as both these towns were abandoned at least as early as the thirteenth century, a corresponding age has been claimed for the pot-sherds found among the ruins.[131]We now know that a true celadon porcelain was made in Siam, and this ware, there is little doubt, was shipped from the port of Martabani.[132]But in spite of this fact, and of the evidence of the name by which the ware was known, by far the larger part of the porcelain used by the Arabs was probably a true Lung-chuan ware exported from the ports of the Chinese coast, Kinsai, Zaitun, and Canton.

The Memlook Sultans of Egypt encouraged commerce with the East. Makrisi tells us that Kelaun received an embassy from Ceylon. During the fourteenth century and later, the goods transhipped at Aden were carried to the ports on the west coast of the Red Sea and then brought overland to Assuan or to Koos, a town lower down the Nile, near to Koptos. Many of the large dishes now to be seen in the museums of France and Germany may havereached the West by this route, for among the presents that the ‘Soldan’ of Egypt sent to Lorenzo de’ Medici in 1487, on the occasion of an embassy (in addition to some sheep with long ears and tails as big as their bodies), we find mention of ‘vasi grandi porcellana mai più veduti simili ne meglio lavorati’ (Marryat, p. 240, quoting a letter from Bibbiena to Clarice de’ Medici). Before this, in 1447, Charlesvii.of France is said to have received from the same source ‘trois escuelles de pourcelaine de Sinant,’ besides ‘platz, tongues verdes’ (whatever they may be), and other vessels of the same material. Again, in 1487 porcelain is mentioned in the maritime laws of Barcelona among the exports from Egypt. In only one of these notices, however, is the Chinese origin of the porcelain expressly stated, so that in the other cases there remains a shadow of a doubt as to what kind of ware is in question. For we must remember that the word porcelain was at that time sometimes applied to Saracenic fayence. Indeed in the old French inventories quoted by the Marquis de Laborde, various kinds of shell-ware, such as frames inlaid with mother-of-pearl, are referred to as porcelain.

It is doubtful whether we can point to a single specimen of porcelain in our European collections whose history can be traced back as far as the year 1500, nor can any exception be made to this statement in favour of anything to be found in the Treasury of St. Mark at Venice. With the exception of one small doubtful piece, I have been unable to discover any specimen of porcelain in that collection. As for the tradition concerning the little plate at Dresden inlaid with garnets cut into facettes—that it was brought back from the East by a crusader—I am afraid that this must go the way of so many similar stories. I have had an opportunity of examining this often-quoted example of early Chinese porcelain, as well as a cupsimilarly inlaid in the same collection, and I quite agree with Dr. Zimmermann, the Curator of the Museum, that the setting can hardly be earlier than the sixteenth century, and that there is nothing in the ware itself, a plain white Ting porcelain, to point to a great age.

There remains, then, the bowl of pale sea-green celadon, mounted in silver gilt, preserved at New College, Oxford. This is known as the cup of Archbishop Warham (1504-32): it is said to have been presented to the college by that prelate, and the early date is confirmed by the style of the mounting. It is at least a curious coincidence that this celadon cup, thedoyen, it would seem, of all the Chinese porcelain in Europe, should prove to be a specimen of the ware first exported from China.[133]

M. de Laborde, in his glossary, quotes from the inventory of the goods of Margaret of Austria, the Regent of the Low Countries during the minority of her nephew, the future Emperor Charlesv., the following items among others: Un beau grand pot de pourcelaine bleue à deux agneaux d’argent. Deux autres esguières d’une sorte de porcelayne bleue. Ung beau gobelet de porcelayne blanche, à couvercle, painct à l’entour de personnaiges d’hommes et femmes.’

An additional interest is given to this inventory of the possessions of the Regent Margaret when we remember that it was of her brother that the following story is told:—In the spring of 1506 Philip started from the Netherlands for Spain, along with his wife Joanna, to claim for the latter the crown of Castile, vacant by the death of the great Queen Isabella. Driven by astorm into Weymouth Harbour, the pair were entertained by Sir Thomas Trenchard, the High Sheriff of the county, at his house not far from Dorchester. On leaving, Philip gave to his host some bowls of Oriental porcelain. Two of these bowls of blue and white ware remain in the possession of the representatives of the Trenchard family. One of them is set in a silver gilt mounting of about 1550, with a London hall-mark on the inside. On the outside of the bowl is a bold floral decoration, and inside some quaint archaic fish, similar to those on the Cheng-te bowl in the Salting collection. They have been lately described by Mr. Winthrop in Gulland’sOriental China, vol. ii.

We have now come to a time when a new channel was opened by which the porcelain and other produce of the Far East could reach Europe. In the year 1517 Fernando Perez D’Andrada sailed from Malacca to the roads of Canton, and the Portuguese not long after established some kind of understanding with the Chinese, which permitted them to trade at that port and at Ningpo. This arrangement, however, lasted but for a short time. Some aggressive proceedings on the part of a new admiral sent out from Portugal aroused the latent hostility of the Ming Government, and the newcomers were before long confined to that ambiguous position at Macao that they occupy to the present day. There does not seem to be any direct evidence that porcelain formed part of the merchandise that they at that time—I mean during the sixteenth century—sent back to Europe; but after the end of the century, when Portugal and her colonies were for a time absorbed in the vast empire ruled by Philipii.of Spain, a considerable amount of the Oriental ware reached the Peninsula by way of ‘the Indies.’ Specimens of this old porcelain, chiefly of the plain white that the Spanish have always preferred,may still be found, it is said, in some of the royal palaces.

The Portuguese in some measure took the place of the Arabs, whose shipping they had driven out from the Indian seas, and it was now in their ships that the Chinese porcelain was carried to the markets of India and Persia. But by the end of the sixteenth century the Portuguese, now sailing under the Spanish flag, began to feel the rivalry of a new power that was destined before long to monopolise nearly the whole trade of the Far East. In 1604, three ships bearing an ambassador and his suite arrived at Canton. The Chinese were alarmed at the singular aspect of these new people, ‘with blue eyes, red hair, and feet one cubit and two-tenths long.’ The Dutch, however—for such these newcomers were—effected little by this embassy, and it is indeed difficult to understand, when we read of the troubled relations of foreign nations with the fast sinking Ming rulers in those stormy days, in what manner and by what route the porcelain that was now reaching the markets of India, Persia, and somewhat later, of Europe, in such large quantities, found its way out from China. After the establishment of the new Manchu dynasty in 1644, the three southern provinces, including the ports of the Canton river and of the Fukien coast, long remained in the hands of the native Chinese admiral or pirate, so well known to Europeans as Coxinga, and it was not till some years after the accession of Kang-he that the imperial authority was established in these parts, and the trade road re-opened with the newly rebuilt kilns of King-te-chen.[134]

The English at that time had not much direct intercourse with China. What little reached us from that country seems to have been obtained rather by piracy than by trade. In the days of Elizabeth, when a Spanish merchantman or carrack was captured, next to the bullion there was nothing that was more eagerly sought for than porcelain, both that which might form part of the cargo and any pieces in use at the officers’ table. As late as the year 1637, it was through the medium of the Portuguese that the bulk of the English trade with China was carried on. Meantime, however, we had established ourselves in the Persian Gulf, and in the year 1623 we assisted Shah Abbas in driving the Portuguese out of Hormus. We had at that time comparatively close relations with Persia, and there was more than one English adventurer in the service of the great Shah. There is some reason to believe that it was by way of our factories or depôts on the Persian Gulf (especially the new establishment at Gombroon,[135]on the mainland, opposite the island of Hormus or Ormuz), as well as by those on the coast of India, that the porcelain of China and Japan first reached England in any quantity. In these commercial relations we may no doubt find one of the causes of the confusion that so long existed with us between the wares of Persia, India, and China.

But Chinese porcelain, as well as Persian fayence, must have reached England by another route—by way of Venice—and this at a somewhat earlier date. To this connection of ‘china-ware’ with Venice there is frequent reference in our Elizabethan literature. Florio in hisItalian Dictionary(1598) interprets the word ‘china’ as ‘a Venus basin,’ and ‘china metal’ is explained by Minsheu in hisSpanish Dialogues(1599)as ‘the fine dishes of earth painted such as are brought from Venice.’ Here the reference probably is to Italian or Persian fayence—in fact the tendency seems rather to have been to use the word ‘china’ for these latter wares and to reserve the term ‘purslane’ or ‘porcelaine’ for the true porcelain of the Far East.

Indeed there is every likelihood that we may find the origin of our term ‘china,’ used vaguely for the better kinds of glazed ceramic wares,[136]in the Persian wordchini, which has long been employed for Chinese porcelain and for the finer kinds of fayence, both in Persia and in India. The point to bear in mind is that with our ancestors this word had no direct connection with the Chinese empire, but rather with Venice and with Persia. On the other hand, the special ware known as ‘purslane,’ as we have said, was by them connected especially with that vague country known as ‘the East Indies.’

At the New Year, 1587-88, Elizabeth received from Burleigh a porringer ‘of white porselyn’ garnished with gold, and from Mr. Robert Cecil ‘a cup of grene pursselyne.’ It was not until the beginning of the next century, apparently, that porcelain, decorated with blue under the glaze, was imported in any quantity. To this time we must assign the four pieces of this ‘blue and white’ ware (one bearing the mark of Wan-li) (Pl. xxviii.) long preserved at Burleigh House, the old home of the senior branch of the Cecil family (see page 85).

By the middle of the seventeenth century Oriental porcelain had already become an important article of commerce. At that time by far the larger quantity was imported by the Dutch, and was distributed by them over France and Germany. There is, however, some reason to believe that the Portuguese continued to import certain classes of ware, but it is difficult to

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