SPECIAL SUBJECTS
examples of hira-makiye (flat makiye), especially those distinguished as togi-dashi; that is to say, pieces where the pictorial design is brought out by repeated processes of rubbing, so that all outlines disappear, and the decoration seems to float in a field of semi-translucid lacquer. When masses of metal or ivory enter into the decorative scheme, they have to be chiselled independently and afterwards embedded in the lacquer. The same is true in a modified degree of mother-of-pearl, though fragments are used to build up designs with the aid of paste in a manner not possible where metals are employed. The fashion of mother-of-pearl mosaics was inspired from China, and some work of that class shows almost incredible microscopic accuracy. A majority of the lacquers manufactured in modern times for the foreign market have mother-of-pearl (from the shell of the haliotis) and ivory in the decorative scheme. That style was brought into vogue by Shibayama Doshō in the second half of the eighteenth century. He cannot be said to have invented it, but, as has been observed of many other Japanese applied arts, the perfecting of the method was mistaken for its origin. It would be impossible to overstate the richness and decorative magnificence of many objects manufactured in modern workshops by combining lacquer grounds with elaborately constructed designs in mother-of-pearl, ivory, faience, gold, and silver. Screens, cabinets, boxes, and plaques in this fashion have been sent abroad in great numbers during the past thirty years, and now embellish many Western salons. But they have few attractions for Japanese connoisseurs, being, in fact, a product of foreign demand. In the works of Kwōyetsu, Kwōrino, and Ritsuō some virility and chasteness
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