A SHORT SKETCH AND MARKS OF JAPANESE PORCELAIN AND POTTERY
Although we do not possess any complete documentary evidence on Ceramics in Japan, and although much of what we do know has been obtained by Englishmen in that country, there is no doubt that this art had its origin in remote antiquity, and that the Japanese seem always to have possessed in a high degree a very vivid sentiment of decoration, happily combined with an extraordinary facility of execution.
The making of porcelain only dates from the beginning of the sixteenth century, when Shonsui, returning from China, where he had learned the secrets of the trade, constructed several furnaces in localities where he found the necessary materials. He settled at Arita, in Hizen, the nearest port to which is Imari, a name familiar to all collectors as a common name for all Japanese porcelain. But this old Imari is always white with designs painted in blue under the glaze.
A hundred years after an Imari potter learnt, under the direction of a Chinese established at Nagasaki, the art of painting and decorating in various colours the porcelain which he sold to Chinese merchants. They in their turn exported it to Europe through the East India Company, so that considerable quantities arrived in England, where it is found to-day in a large number of families which have preserved the tastes of their forefathers. Arita or Imari were names indifferently applied to this porcelain.
Amongst the other numerous works where pottery and porcelain were made the following list comprises the chief: Awata, Banko or Imbe, Kaga or Kutani, with beautiful red and gold decoration; Kioto, Kishu, Nabeshima, Satsuma, Soma, Sanda, Séto (in the province of Owari, to-day one of the largest centres of production), and Tokio.
Japanese porcelain is distinguished from Chinese by a closer imitation from nature in the flowers and birds, and, above all, by much more correct design, more chaste and elegant in the representation of the human figure. The marks are often impressed or stamped in a circle, oblong or oval, and frequently, too, Chinese marks are imitated.
It will be useful to indicate some characteristics of the chief of the factories mentioned above.