WARES OF HIZEN
of them shows some charming feature. It need scarcely be said that the choicest are always painted with extreme care, their enamels pure and brilliant, their blue sous couverte rich and clear, their red soft, uniform, and solid. The history of the world tells of no people whose utensils for eating purposes were so refined and ornamental as the Imari services of the Japanese. By these, not by the "Old Japan" of eighteenth-century Europe, the ware should be judged. Since the opening of the country in 1857 much finer examples have been sent westward than those exported by the Dutch, but the reputation of the latter still survives and prevents Imari-yaki from occupying its proper place in Western esteem.
Although the Dutch factory at Deshima confined its purchases of Hizen porcelain chiefly to profusely ornamented and comparatively rough pieces, specially designed for sale abroad, specimens of the much chaster and more delicate Nabeshima ware were also shipped to Europe in small numbers. In two striking respects this Nabeshima-yaki differed from the ware of Imari, the so-called "Old Japan." In the first place, its glaze, instead of being pervaded by a more or less marked tinge of bluish green, was of the purest milk-white, soft and restful in tone. This feature constituted one of the chief and most easily detected points of superiority in Nabeshima porcelain, and the importance of the distinction should be carefully noted. It is more marked in porcelain decorated entirely with enamels over the glaze than in the variety where blue sous couverte also occurs, but in both classes milky whiteness of surface is a test at once of origin and of quality. In the second place, blue under the glaze, which always enters largely into the decoration of
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