Satsuma pottery

“ There are not wanting connoisseurs who with some show of reason place the faience of Iwakura and the finer specimens of the Awata-yaki in the same rank with the ware of Satsuma. But even while admitting that the technical character of the former is not inferior to that of the latter, the conviction is inevitable that the Kyōtō pottery, as a rule, lacks solidity. Its best representatives, for all their fine pâte, their extraordinary regular crackle, and the warm richness of their buff-coloured body, inevitably present, in greater or less degree, a comparatively fragile aspect. ”

“ Pottery from Korea and porcelain from China, of course, had some influence in Japan. The Japanese are considered very fine potters, perhaps the best in the world, and their old ware is highly prized. The handsome old pottery [pg 372] made in Kyoto and also that of Bizen are much valued by Japanese collectors, and the work of such famous men as Nomura, Ninsei, and others is highly esteemed. Old Imari and Arita wares are considered choice, as well as Satsuma, but all of them, especially Satsuma, are much imitated to-day. ”

“ Fig. 122 is one of the pieces pictured in the Audesley-Bowes book, as an example of the old Satsuma, and is very curious in form.
The modern Satsuma is much of it very beautiful, but of course it commands no such prices as the older. Most of it shows the glaze broken throughout into a most delicate network of crackle, which is peculiar and interesting.
The small teapot here shown is not only perfect in tone, glaze, and decoration, but also in form. It is modern work, and was imported by Mr. ”

“ POTTERY AND PORCELAIN
No phrase is commoner in the mouths of Western collectors than “Old Satsuma”; no ware is rarer in Western collections. Nine hundred and ninety-nine pieces out of every thousand that do duty as genuine examples of this prince of Satsuma. faiences are simply examples of the skill of modern forgers. In point of fact, the production of faience decorated with gold and coloured enamels may be said to have commenced at the beginning of the eighth century in Satsuma. ”

“ Besides the porcelain productions of Japan are two varieties of pottery or faience, which are remarkable for richness of color and decoration: the one is called “Kaga Ware,” the other “Satsuma,” from the districts where they are produced. Most of the Kaga ware brought to us is of a thick, heavy body, and colored with a dark sort of Indian-red, touched with lines of gilding. Some of the finer specimens, however{224}, like the vases shown in the recent work of Messrs. Audesley and Bowes, are in polychrome, and very beautiful. ”

“ Oniwa ware, 387; porcelain, 388, 418; surface decorators, 388–392; Takata ware, 392; Kōren ware, 393; Koishikawa ware, 394. Yohei, Mori, pottery, and the Yusetsu ware, 363. Yōhei, Taizan, Awata potters of various generations, 199, 200. Yohei, Yama-no-uchi, potter, 108. Yojibei, potter, 312. Yorasaku, Higuchi, potter, 108. Yoshida Denemon, revives the Kutani ware, 249. Yoshida Hikoroku, potter, 403. Yoshida-mura, Hizen, pottery, 115. Yoshiemon, patron of keramic art, 139. Yoshihiro, chief of Satsuma, patron of keramic industry, 135–137, 141. Yoshimasa, Ashikaga Shōgun, as an art patron, 17. ”

“ It belonged almost solely to the province of the Hirado potters, and they used it solely in a subsidiary rôle, as for the tops of censers or for some trivial part of an alcove statuette. But what the Satsuma artists have now conceived is pierced decoration constituting the sole ornamentation of a specimen. It appears at first sight that translucid porcelain should be a better and more natural medium for work of this kind, since faience does not lend itself so readily to the production of sharp edges and clearly chiselled contours. ”

“ Their work shows much promise, but like all fine specimens of the Sinico-Japanese school, the prices are too high to attract wide custom.
The Satsuma potters also have made a new departure, but in their case originality may be claimed, since no prototype is to be found among Chinese wares. They now produce faience with designs pierced à jour in a manner that is at once very beautiful and extraordinarily delicate. Satsuma keramists were never remarkable for such work in former times. ”

“ The Japanese have an endless variety of earthen-ware made for household use. Of this class some pieces are left unglazed, and others have a very fusible plumbeous glaze, under which painted decorations are sometimes to be seen. Of their semi-porcellaneous, highly refractory potteries, the two best known in America are the Satsuma and Awata. The former (Fig. 116) is so called from the province of that name, in the south of the island of Kiusiu, where it has been made at or near Kagoshima for nearly three hundred years. The latter is made in one of the suburbs of Kioto, in Central Japan. ”

“ This facility of manipulation has procured for Raku faience the title of "Uchi yaki," or "home made pottery," and the names of quite a considerable number of amateurs are associated with its domestic manufacture. As shown above, the Imado potters included it among their productions. It has also been made, from time to time during the present century, by various residents of the Honjo district of Tōkyō. A curious and interesting manner of employing this Raku faience was suggested by the Chinese device of ornamenting woodwork with inlaid plaques of porcelain. ”

“ This is a reproduction of the "corduroy" type often affected by Satsuma potters. Indeed, the amateur may easily mistake occasional specimens of so-called "Mishima" Satsuma for Yatsushiro ware, more especially as the Higo potters sometimes employed clay obtained in Satsuma. Old examples of Yatsushiro-yaki are usually without marks.
There is a porcelain factory also in the province of Higo. It was established at Oda, in the Udo district, by order of the Hosokawa chief, in 1791, and under his patronage the industry attained some importance. ”

“ In all that region of achievement, the Chinese potters stood alone and seemingly unapproachable. The Japanese, on the contrary, made a specialty of faience, and in that particular line they reached a high standard of excellence. No faience produced either in China or any other Oriental country can dispute the palm with really representative specimens of Satsuma ware. Not without full reason have Western connoisseurs lavished panegyrics upon that exquisite production. ”

“ The faience of the Kyōtō artists never reached quite to the level of the Satsuma in quality of pâte and glowing mellowness of decoration: their materials were slightly inferior. But their skill as decorators was as great as its range was wide, and they produced a multitude of masterpieces on which alone Japan's keramic fame might safely be rested. ”

“ Setting aside, however, the strong improbability that a style of decoration so widely practised and so highly esteemed could have remained unknown during a century and a half to experts working for one of the most puissant chieftains in Japan, we have the evidence of trustworthy traditions and written records that enamelled faience was made by the potters at Tatsumonji—the principal factory of Satsuma-ware in early days—as far back as the year 1676. Mitsuhisa, then feudal lord of Satsuma, was a munificent patron of art. ”

“ Satsuma ware is probably the most widely known, and the most esteemed among foreigners, of Japanese porcelain. Its soft, cream-like colour is now known in every part of the world, while the delicate colour decorations [144] imposed upon the cream-like background, certainly give a most effective appearance. I question however whether, from a purely artistic standpoint, Satsuma is worthy of being compared with many of the other porcelains in Japan. ”

“ The modern potteries at Yo Chou in Shensi are represented in the Field Museum, Chicago, by a black–painted ware in Tz ́ŭ Chou style, by a greyish white ware with sketchy blue designs, and by a black slag–like earthenware which is extremely light to handle. It is also suggested that a well known type of pottery, painted with free floral designs in black and white on a creamy glaze which is stained a pinkish brown colour, is an earlier product of the same potteries. ”

“ The only group of industries which can compare with potmaking in intellectual importance is that of the textile fabrics; basketry and weaving. But whereas basket-work and all forms of matting and cloth are perishable and will burn, broken pottery is almost indestructible, just because, once broken, it is so useless. It follows that evidence so permanent, so copious, and so plastic, that is to say so infinitely sensitive a register of the changes of the artist’s mood, as the potsherds on an ancient site, is among the most valuable that we can ever have, for tracing the dawn of culture. ”

“ Hardness.—The paste exposed in fractured edges can be scratched with a steel point, and often with ease. Some of the white pottery of ancient Tusayan can be carved almost as readily as chalk or sun-dried clay. At the same time all localities furnish occasionally specimens that through the accidents of firing have the ring and hardness of stoneware. The ancient pottery is generally superior in hardness to that produced by the historic tribes. ”

“ Showy, brilliant, and decorative reproductions are met with frequently, but neither in paste or painting are they comparable. Real old Satsuma, at first sight, looks like ivory, and the designs display infinite care, the colours being low in tone, whilst the gold is pencilled with such a multitude of minute lines as to be truly wonderful. ”

“ A few specimens bought in the neighbourhood of the Shih–wan potteries, and no doubt of local make, are in the British Museum. They consist of lion joss–stick holders, crab–shaped pots for growing lily bulbs, and small figures of a hard, rough stoneware of buff or drab colour. The bulb pots have an opaque green glaze with passages of transparent flambé colours, not unlike the Yi–hsing or Canton Chün glazes, and the other pieces have washes of the thin, translucent green, turquoise, yellow, and purplish brown glazes which are usually applied on the biscuit of pottery or porcelain. ”

“ Perceiving that although the Satsuma fief possessed potters of ability, local consumption was chiefly supplied by wares imported from
NAME OF CLAY
Hizen, he conceived the idea of establishing a kiln for the manufacture of porcelain. A capitalist was easily induced to embark in the enterprise, as also was an amateur keramist of some skill, Noda Kichiemon. Information as to the methods of porcelain manufacture was supplied by a potter called Kitamura Denzaemon, who had once been employed at the Sarayama factory in Hizen and was now working in a mine. ”

“ Though decorated in the characteristic style with slight sketchy design in brown and maroon, they show a decided falling off when compared with the older specimens. The body is a hard, greyish white stoneware; there is no slip covering, and the glaze is yellowish, soft–looking, and freely crackled, without the solid qualities of the older ivory glaze on a white slip coating. I am inclined to think that this degenerate type of ware dates back no farther than the nineteenth century, and that the Tz ́ŭ Chou pottery preserved its character up to and perhaps throughout the eighteenth century. ”

“ The technical difficulties attending the production of such ware are obvious. By what ingenuity does the Japanese artist overcome the difference between decorating material and body? A precisely similar style of decoration is employed on many household vessels of earthen-ware or majolica. In these very fine effects are secured by the choice of a sombre ground, from which the porcelain flowers and animals stand out in clear and bold relief. The best Satsuma ware and crackle are perfect marvels of color. ”

“ Among Japanese ceramic products there is a big middle class, what we have called kaolinic stoneware. Wares of this kind, when made in neighbouring kilns and differing in their decoration in no way from what may be classed as true porcelain—and this is the case in the pottery districts of Kaga and around Kioto—have naturally found their way within our limits. ”

“ Could all the work actually bestowed upon one of these vases, and as it can be seen before firing, be seen after firing, the faience of Limoges would resemble that of England or any other pottery which is painted on the glaze. But the process is different, and after the firing the detail of the work melts away, leaving behind that fascinating harmony of colors which has never before been produced on any pottery. Nothing has as yet been invented to replace work and care ”

“ After the first coat, gum tragacanth is added, as in glazing on green clay. The fourth coat need not entirely cover the piece, but the top should be carefully glazed. If for any reason the pottery has to be re-fired, it should be reglazed, but two coats only will be necessary, and the glaze need not be quite so heavy as that used on the biscuit. Do not be discouraged if your pieces need a second or even a third firing, for often the most beautiful results are obtained by re-firing. Quality—that combination of richness, and depth of colour and texture—rarely comes with the first firing. ”

“ In the open air children are painting the cups. Each artist paints with his own colour and his own few strokes, whether a leaf, a tree, a man’s dress or beard, and passes it over to his neighbour, who in turn applies his brush to paint what is his share in the decoration.” Unfortunately there is no reason to suppose that the writer made his observations with an expert eye which would make a distinction between pottery and porcelain, but in any case it is certain that he found a vast ceramic industry in full blast at Tê-hua. ”