SPECIAL SUBJECTS
eign merchants began to settle in Yokohama in 1858, several experts were working skilfully in Owari after the methods of Kaji Tsunekichi. Up to that time there had been little demand for enamels of large dimensions, but when the foreign market called for vases, censers, plaques, and such things, no difficulty was experienced in supplying them. Thus, about the year 1865, there commenced an export of enamels which had no prototypes in Japan, being destined frankly for European and American collectors. From a technical point of view these works had much to commend them. The base—usually of copper—was as thin as cardboard; the cloisons, exceedingly fine and delicate, were laid on with care and accuracy; the colours were even, and the design showed artistic judgment. Two faults, however, marred the work: first, the shapes were clumsy and unpleasing, being, in fact, copied from bronzes where solidity justified forms unsuited to thin enamelled vessels; secondly, the colours, sombre and somewhat impure, lacked the glow and mellowness that give decorative superiority to the technically inferior Chinese enamels of the later Ming and early Tsing eras. Very soon, however, the artisans of Nagoya (Owari), Yokohama, and Tōkyō—where the art had been taken up—found that faithful and fine workmanship did not pay. The foreign export merchant desired many and cheap specimens for export rather than few and costly. There followed then a period of gradual decline, and the enamels exported to Europe were products of a widely different character and of different makers. The industry was threatened with extinction and would certainly have dwindled to insignificant dimensions had not a few earnest artists, working in the face of
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