Porcelain

CHAPTER   XI
THE PORCELAIN OF KOREA AND OF THE INDO-CHINESE PENINSULA

Korea

THE self-contained culture of the Middle Kingdom spread at an early time to the less advanced and more or less tributary countries that surrounded it: on the south to the confused complex of states that are conveniently grouped together as Indo-China; on the north to Korea; and on the east, or more accurately on the north-east, to Japan. To these islands, however, the Chinese civilisation for the most part spread by way of Korea, and as this was in a measure the route taken in the case of the potter’s art, it may be well to deal first with the great northern peninsula.

The Chinese claim to have conquered and even incorporated Korea as long ago as the Tang dynasty (618-907 A.D.), and even before that time the country had been overrun by the Japanese. The latter people have at all times presented themselves to the Koreans as ruthless conquerors and pirates, and indeed they succeeded during their last great expedition at the end of the sixteenth century in sweeping the country so bare that to this day its poverty and the low state of its artistic culture is generally attributed to this gigantic razzia from which the country never recovered. And yet Korea has always taken a place in Japanese estimation second only to China as a source of their artistic and practical knowledge, if not of their literature and philosophy; and this is especially the case with regard to the potter’s craft—the technical part of it above all. Time and again do we hear of famous Korean potters, or even of whole families and tribes, being brought over and set to work by the local Japanese ruler either with the materials they brought with them, or with the clays and glazes that their experience enabled them to discover in their new homes.

We need not, therefore, be surprised to find that after the wonders of Japan had been laid open to the admiration of the West, the greatest hopes were entertained of finding artistic treasures at least as valuable in the great peninsula to the west which still remained a forbidden land. Failing direct evidence of this wealth, it became the habit to attribute to Korea any Oriental ware, old or new, of which the origin was unknown. This tendency was taken advantage of by more than one enterprising dealer, and when at a later time the country was in a measure thrown open, cases of gorgeously decorated Japanese ware, brand-new from Yokohama or Nagasaki, were sent round by way of Chemulpo, the port of the Korean capital, so that their Korean origin could be guaranteed. Long before this, the home of an important group of Japanese porcelain, that now generally known as ‘Kakiyemon,’ had been found by Jacquemart in Korea. Now that of late years these various fallacies and supercheries have been exposed, and that the extreme poverty of the land in artistic work of any kind has been demonstrated, we may perhaps see a tendency to an undue depreciation of the artistic capabilities of the country in former days. We must at any rate remember that the Japanese experts, who are in the best position to know, have always maintained that the Koreans in the sixteenth century were possessed of the secret of enamelling in colour upon porcelain, or, at all events, that they were acquainted with the coloured glazes of the demi grand feu, and that so good an authority as Captain Brinkley has accepted, as of Korean origin, specimens of enamelled ware still existing in Japanese collections.

Meantime we must be contented with the scanty examples of pottery, stoneware, and porcelain that have been actually brought home from Korea, and among these pieces we must discriminate between the wares of native manufacture and the porcelain that had been imported from China, either overland by way of Niu-chuang or across the Gulf of Petchili from the ports of Shantung. Of late years many specimens have been collected, chiefly at Seoul, the capital, especially by members of the various foreign legations, and some of these have found their way into European museums.¹⁰⁹

Apart from some small pieces of modern blue and white and enamelled wares, undoubtedly of true porcelain, but very rough in execution and poor in colour, which are said to be of local manufacture, we find:—

1. A plain white ware often showing signs of age, but apparently in no way differing from the ivory-white ware of Fukien. Japanese experts, however, claim to distinguish pieces of Korean origin. Such specimens are much valued in Japan, and some are said to have been brought back after the great expedition at the end of the sixteenth century. We find also specimens of a heavy white ware, with decoration in a high relief, which is undoubtedly of native origin. At Sèvres is a large white vase, with dragons in relief, brought from Seoul.

2. Celadon porcelain, of many types. Of this ware there are many specimens in our museums. At Sèvres we find two bowls of a fine rich tint of olive green, presented by the King of Korea to the late President Carnot ‘as the most valuable of the ancient productions of his poor country.’ In the same collection may be seen a case full of important specimens brought back in 1893 by M. de Plancy, the French diplomatic agent at Seoul. Among them are some large rude celadon vases, one with some attempts at blue decoration under the glaze. In the British Museum are several celadon bowls, some with moulded floral patterns in relief. Among some bowls of a greyish celadon from Korea, in the Ethnographical Museum at Dresden, I noticed some with an unglazed ring on the upper surface, pointing to a primitive method of support in the furnace, perhaps similar to that formerly employed in Siam. Dr. Bushell quotes from a Chinese work on Korea, written in the first half of the twelfth century, an account of the elaborately moulded wine-cups and vessels of all kinds made in that country. This ware is described as of a kingfisher green, but it may probably be regarded as a full-coloured variety of celadon. This interpretation is confirmed by a later Chinese work (published 1387), which distinctly says—I quote from Dr. Bushell’s translation—‘The ceramic objects produced in the ancient Korean kilns were of a greyish green colour resembling the celadon ware of Lung-chuan. There was one kind overlaid with white sprays of flowers, but this was not valued so very highly’ (Oriental Ceramic Art, p. 681).

3. An important class of Korean ware is formed by the coarsely crackled pieces of brownish or yellow colour, which in China would probably be classed as Ko yao. These are often roughly decorated with daubs of blue under the glaze, resembling in this some of the older pieces brought from Borneo.

4. A greyish ware, inlaid with designs of white slip, on the principle of our ‘encaustic tiles’ of the Middle Ages. This is perhaps the only original type that we can connect with Korea, and it would seem that this is the ware alluded to at the end of the quotation we have just given from an old Chinese book. This inlaid ware appears to have been greatly admired by the Japanese, for it was closely imitated in more than one district. The well-known Yatsushiro pottery, first made in the province of Higo in the seventeenth century, is distinctly a copy of this Korean model. Among the specimens at Sèvres brought home by M. de Plancy, there is a tall vase of this type cut down in the neck decorated with flying cranes in white slip. This ware, however, is not a true porcelain; at the best it is a kind of kaolinic stoneware, and the same may be said of most of the old heavy pieces brought back from Korea.

There is not much in the way of decorative design to be found on any of the varieties of Korean porcelain or stoneware that we have now described, and we may look in vain among the few ornamental motifs to be found on these wares for any marked divergency from Chinese types.

Siam and the Indo-Chinese Peninsula

Under the somewhat vague heading of Indo-China we will collect a few notes upon the specimens of porcelain that have been found in the various states into which the great peninsula that stretches south between the China Sea and the Bay of Bengal is divided.

In looking through the artistic productions of all these countries, we find one marked characteristic; and that is the way in which Chinese forms and Chinese decorative motifs have pushed their way in and in part replaced the old Buddhist and Brahmanistic styles.

As matters now stand, the most important for us of these states is Siam, for here we are at once brought face to face with one of the places of manufacture of the famous heavy celadon ware which in the Middle Ages was carried by Arab and Chinese traders over all the seas of the then known world. We shall have in a later chapter to come back to the question of this trade, and then we shall be able to show that the discussion as to the origin of this martabani ware has been the means, as is indeed often the case in such disputes, of throwing much light on the early history of Chinese porcelain.

For the present we are only concerned with an important discovery quite recently made not far from the frontier of Siam and Pegu. Many specimens of celadon, some of the older type, have come in recent years from various parts of Indo-China. In the museum at Sèvres are some pieces of rough greyish ware, with a thick, irregularly crackled glaze, brought back in 1893 by the Mission Fournereux from Siam and Cambodia; among these fragments of old celadon we find a pair of contorted bowls, fused together in the kiln, in fact undoubted ‘wasters,’ such as could only be found in the neighbourhood of the furnaces where they were fired. At the instigation of Mr. C. H. Read of the British Museum, Mr. Lyle has lately explored the remains of old potteries now hidden in deep jungle, at a place called Sawankalok, not far from the western frontier of Siam. These old kilns are situated some two hundred miles to the north of Bangkok, and about the same distance from the port of Molmein (Malmen). To show the importance of this discovery, we need only point out that near to the latter town lies the old port of Martaban, which played so important a part in the mediæval trade of the Arabs, and from which, doubtless, the name of Martabani, by which celadon ware has always been known in the Mohammedan East, is derived. Among the many fragments brought back by Mr. Lyle are some which from their distinct translucency, and from the whiteness and the conchoidal fracture of the paste, may be unhesitatingly classed as true porcelain. The colour of the glaze varies from a prevailing greyish green to a fine turquoise tint in a few specimens. That the ware was made on the spot is proved by the presence of many defective pieces—‘wasters’ that had been thrown away—as well as by the numerous conical props (for the support of the ware in the kiln) found mixed with the fragments. On these tall, nozzle-shaped props the plates and bowls were supported in an inverted position. It is by this unusual method of support that we may account for the fact that the glaze covers the whole of the lower surface—so exceptional an occurrence in the case of porcelain—and at the same time for the absence of the glaze from a ring-like portion of the upper surface. We may note that a similar distribution of the glaze is found occasionally on large plates of the old heavy ware brought from other countries; of this there are notable examples in the museum at Gotha (see page 72). The ground in these Siamese specimens has assumed where exposed, but there only, the deep red so admired by the Chinese in the old Lung-chuan ware. The paste, in many of the examples, has been moulded in low relief in the characteristic lotus-leaf pattern, while on a few pieces there is a rough decoration in greenish black under the glaze. All remembrance of these old kilns has completely passed away, and at the present day the local market is supplied with a rough stoneware brought overland from Yunnan.¹¹⁰

The porcelain now found in Siam, of which many specimens have been lately brought to Europe, is of a very different character. This is the highly decorated enamelled ware which may be classed with the famille rose from the prevalence of the rouge d’or among the enamels. This ware, none of which can be earlier than the middle of the eighteenth century, is certainly made in China, but the presence in the decoration of certain peculiar Buddhist types makes it rather difficult to believe that the enamelling was in all cases executed in Canton. It is true that in the colours, and in the general style of the decoration, we are often reminded of the well-known Cantonese enamels on copper. The white surface of the ground is, for the most part, entirely hidden by a floral decoration; but amid this, on medallions surrounded by tongues of flame, we find centaur-like monsters with human heads, above which rise almond-shaped nimbi. From the top of the cover of the hemispherical bowls—the commonest form—rises a knob in the shape of the Buddhist jewel. The enamel of this ware appears to scale off readily, as if from imperfect firing. The prevailing colours are a deep red for the ground, and a bright green relieved with white and yellow for the design (Pl. xxii.). While the finer specimens, as we have already said, remind us of the Canton enamels, others suggest rather, in the scheme of colour and decoration, the painted and lacquered bowls of India and Ceylon. In the Indian Museum at South Kensington may be seen an exceptionally fine collection of this Sinico-Siamese porcelain, lent by Signor Cardu, and a good opportunity is here provided for comparing its decoration with that on the rough earthenware from Ceylon and various parts of India which is exhibited in adjacent cases.

PLATE XXII. CHINESE

A coarse kind of porcelain is made in Annam. At Sèvres are some cups presented by the envoy from that kingdom. The rude pattern of bamboos painted in blue, sous couverte, on a greyish paste, does not give an exalted idea of Annamese civilisation.

In Japan we sometimes find specimens of a somewhat rough but picturesquely decorated ware, hardly a true porcelain, I think, which from the country of its origin is known as Kochi. From the nature and colour of its glaze it may be compared to some of the old Chinese wares of the demi grand feu, and again, in certain points, to the earlier types of the Japanese porcelain of Kaga and Imari. Kochi has been identified with Cochin-China, but as the geographical ideas of the Japanese as to foreign states were not very definite—derived as they were from the Chinese geographers of the Ming period—we may perhaps be justified in looking further north for the source of this ware, either in Tonquin or in some part of Kuang-tung, the southernmost province of China.¹¹¹

CHAPTER   XII
THE PORCELAIN OF JAPAN

IN any assemblage of the ceramic products of Japan, more especially in one of native origin, it will be seen that porcelain no longer, as in China, holds the place of honour. This place would be taken, in such a collection, by a series of small bowls and jars mostly of a dark-coloured earthenware, which offer little to attract a European eye. On the other hand, a Western collector of Japanese ceramics would be likely to find more to interest him in the decorated fayence of which the kilns of Kioto and Satsuma have furnished the most exquisite examples. And yet, perhaps, in no country, not even in China, do we find porcelain, and that of a high technical quality, so largely employed for domestic use. The commonest coolie eats his rice or drinks his tea or saké from a bowl or cup of porcelain, while to find specimens of the old rough stoneware or earthenware we must explore the Kura—the fireproof storehouses of the rich noble or merchant—where, wrapped in cases of old brocade, these little objects are carefully preserved and classified. It would be out of place here to enter into the causes, political, social, and, we may add, also psychological, that have influenced the Japanese mind in thus associating all that is refined and intellectual with a class of pottery in which, to say the least, the artistic possibilities are confined within very narrow limits. But, as is now well known, this tendency has been fostered by the ceremonies connected with the social gatherings known as the Cha-no-yu (literally ‘hot water for tea‘), when the powdered tea is prepared in and drunk from examples of these primitive wares. On such occasions the criticism and measured praise of the utensils employed forms an important—indeed an almost obligatory—part of the conversation among the guests.

The merits of Chinese porcelain, however, have long been acknowledged by the Japanese. Possibly as early as the ninth century specimens of celadon were imported. Direct communication with China has indeed since that time been subject to many interruptions, and it has at all times been carried on subject to galling restrictions and heavy duties levied by the governments of both countries. The Japanese have at many times made piratical descents upon the coast of China, and among the loot thus obtained many fine pieces of Chinese porcelain may have found their way to Japan. There was, however, a period in the fifteenth century during which a pretty steady trade was kept up, under the patronage of the pleasure-loving Ashikaga Shoguns, and many specimens of the earlier Ming porcelain must have reached Japan at that time. It has always been the celadon ware that has found most favour with the Japanese, and fabulous prices were, and indeed still are, given for fine pieces. We may note that such specimens are as a rule associated in the Japanese mind with the Yuan or Mongol dynasty. Speaking generally, however, it was not to this direct intercourse with China that the Japanese attribute their knowledge of ceramic processes. From an early date nearly all that they knew of the continental lands of Asia seems to have reached them from Korea, a country where they played alternately the part of ruthless invaders and devastators, and of eager and submissive students.

Let us then rapidly glance over the records preserved by the Japanese of their early lessons in the potter’s art, that we may better understand the conditions under which the manufacture of porcelain was at length established in the country at the end of the sixteenth century.

Of the early pottery of Japan—rude figures, coffins, and strange-shaped vases of coarse earthenware dating from the early centuries of our era—we know, thanks to the researches of Mr. Gowland, much more than we do of the products of a similar stage of culture in China. In the British Museum we may see a collection, unique of its kind in Europe, of prehistoric objects, found most of them in or around the dolmen tombs of the early emperors, and brought together in Japan by that energetic explorer. As, according to Japanese tradition, Korean potters were in those early days already settled in Japan, we need not be surprised to find that vessels of very similar shape, but of a rather better ware, have also been found in Korean tombs.

The earliest ware whose origin we can trace to a definite spot, is that formerly made at Karatsu, in Hizen, near to the great porcelain district of later days. Korean potters are traditionally reported to have been established here as far back as the early part of the seventh century. Of this primitive ware we will only note that the pieces were placed in the kiln in an inverted position, either without supports (the Kuchi-nashi-de, or ‘unglazed orifice ware‘), or supported by two props of rectangular section (the Geta okoshi, or ‘clog supports‘). This is a point of interest in connection with the similar devices used in firing some of the early celadon. But, as Captain Brinkley points out (The Chrysanthemum, vol. iii. p. 18), it was the introduction of tea from China¹¹² early in the thirteenth century that gave rise, for the first time, to a demand for a better kind of pottery.

Kato Shirozayemon, a native of Owari, made, we are told, a five years’ visit to China about this time (he returned to his native village of Seto in 1223) in order to study the potter’s craft. The ware that he succeeded in making on his return to Japan has a reddish brown paste covered with a dark glaze, streaked and patched with lighter tints. This was probably more or less an imitation of the Kien yao, the ‘hare-fur’ cups made in the province of Fukien in late Sung times.¹¹³ These cups, so prized by the Japanese, are of interest to us, as they may, in some degree, be regarded as the ancestral type from which the long series of Japanese tea-bowls is derived. But neither the ware of Toshiro (he is generally known by this shortened form of his name), nor that of his followers, has any claim to be classed as porcelain. It is, however, from Seto, the native village of Toshiro, where he set up his kilns on his return from China, that the commonest Japanese name for all kinds of ceramic ware, but more especially for porcelain, is derived, and the district is now a great centre for the production of blue and white porcelain.

Apart from this dark ware and from the heavy celadon, it would seem that at this time, and even later, the only true porcelain known to the Japanese was the white translucent ware of Korea, itself probably an offshoot of some early form of Ting ware. That Toshiro, who must have travelled in Fukien barely two generations earlier than Marco Polo, should only have learned to make this one kind of dark ware, shows how locally circumscribed was the knowledge and use in China, in Sung times, of different kinds of porcelain.

We have to wait nearly three hundred years for the first attempts at the manufacture of porcelain in Japan. Gorodayu Shonsui, the second great name in the history of Japanese ceramics, made his way to Fuchow early in the sixteenth century. He probably visited King-te-chen, and returned to Japan in the year 1513, bringing with him specimens of the materials used by the Chinese, both for the paste and for the glaze of their porcelain. But although Shonsui on his return settled at Arita, in the centre of what was at a later time the principal porcelain district of Japan, he appears never to have discovered the precious deposits of kaolin in the neighbouring hills; for when the supplies brought from China came to an end, he and his successors had to fall back upon the manufacture of fayence. A few specimens of the ware he made have been preserved in Japan, and it has often been copied since Shonsui’s time—even in China, it is said. It is a fair imitation of the Ming blue and white, and we may note that the plum-blossom often occurs in the decoration. We are told that the secret of the process of enamel painting was rigorously kept from Shonsui. We have seen that it is at least doubtful whether this process was known to the Chinese at that time, but the reference may be to the ware covered with polychrome painted glazes.

There are two pieces attributed to Shonsui, on native evidence, in the historical collection of Japanese pottery at South Kensington, but it is very doubtful whether these very ordinary pieces of blue and white are even as old as the later date (1580-90) somewhat strangely attributed to them on the same authority.

And now the Korean potter is found again on the scene. It was reserved for Risampei, a native of that country, to recognise for the first time—in 1599, it is said—the value of the white crumbling rocks out-cropping on the hills that rise at the back of Arita. Here he built his kilns and succeeded in making a fairly good imitation of the Chinese blue and white which was now becoming more and more in request as an article of commerce.

At this stage we are brought into contact not only with the local history and the politics of the day, but with the great questions of world traffic that were being fought out at the time. The rich western island of Kiushiu had long been the principal seat of the efforts of the Portuguese and Spanish missionaries. They had nowhere more converts than on the coasts of Hizen and on the adjacent islands. So that to one or more of these early kilns established near Arita we may reasonably assign some at least of those strange plates, painted with Biblical subjects, that have excited so much curiosity. I will only point to the large dish with an elaborate picture of the Baptism of Christ in the centre, now at South Kensington (Pl. xiv.). The subject is painted in blue under the glaze and heightened by gilding. Around the edge we find a design of little naked boys—amorini, in fact—playing among flowers.¹¹⁴

We can find nothing in the Japanese records to throw light on the porcelain made in Hizen during the first half of the seventeenth century, but much of the somewhat roughly decorated blue and white ware (the larger dishes especially, made for India and Persia) has been classed, on the ground of the occurrence of spur-marks, and of the nature of the paste and decoration, as Japanese.¹¹⁵ Some of this ware may be as old as this time, when (I mean shortly before the middle of the seventeenth century) the demand from the West was ever increasing, and the Chinese supply was so uncertain and so inferior in quality.

Meantime the Dutch and English factories on the island of Hirado, opposite to the pottery district of Imari, were finally closed (1641), and all communication with the outside world prohibited. The only exception made was in favour of the strictly limited commerce carried on through the Dutch and Chinese merchants, who were confined in their prison-like factories at Nagasaki.¹¹⁶

Now it is a remarkable fact that our first definite information concerning the introduction of Japanese porcelain into Europe dates from this very period, and it is to approximately the same date that the Japanese ascribe the introduction of coloured enamels among the Hizen potters. One Higashidori Tokuzayemon, a potter of Imari, is said to have derived some knowledge of the precious secret from the captain of a Chinese junk trading at Nagasaki in 1648. With the assistance of Kakiyemon, a skilled potter of the same district, he succeeded in imitating the five-coloured enamelled wares of the Wan-li period. Another Japanese authority¹¹⁷ gives the name of his assistant as Gosu Gombei, and states that by 1645, after many fruitless experiments, they were able to produce a ware decorated with coloured enamels and with gold and silver, which was exported at first through the medium of a Chinese merchant, and shortly after sold to the Dutch.

So far from Japanese sources. On the other hand, we hear of an early Dutch ambassador sent from Batavia—‘Le Sieur Wagenaar, grand connoisseur et fort habile dans ces sortes d‘œuvres‘—in fact himself a designer of patterns, one of which, it is said—white flowers on a blue ground—found great favour at this time. In the same work¹¹⁸ we are told that this gentleman, who combined the most delicate diplomatic negotiations with practical commercial undertakings, took back with him to Batavia more than twenty thousand pieces of plain white ware (1634-35). It is, however, very probable that the Dutch may have had a great deal to do with the introduction of coloured enamels into Japan.

We must remember that during this time (say between 1630 and 1650) two important series of events were coming to pass which revolutionised the Eastern trade. These were, first, in China the troubles attending the expulsion of the Ming dynasty, including the burning of King-te-chen and the stoppage of the supply of porcelain for shipping at Canton; and secondly, the final triumph of the anti-Christian party in Japan, and the closing of the country to foreigners. It is no wonder, then, if the Dutch ambassador was empowered to offer almost any terms to the Japanese, provided that the latter would only make an exception in favour of the merchants of his country.

Turning now from the records of the Japanese and of the Dutch merchants, let us examine the specimens of Japanese porcelain that we find in our oldest European collections, and which we may reasonably assign to the seventeenth century. Apart from the blue and white, we find here two classes of enamelled ware which we now know to be of Japanese origin.

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 (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.