Page 40 - Catalogue of the Edward Morse collection of Japanese pottery MFA BOSTON

ao INTRODUCTION
Objects worn on the Body

A little contrivance, usually of metal, to hold ink and a brush, which is
worn on the girdle, is rarely seen in pottery. Lawyers and doctors were in
former times permitted to wear a wooden or ivory apology for a sword.
This device was carved in the form of a fish or some other quaint object.
The collection contains one made of pottery. An inro, which is almost
universally seen in lacquer, is occasionally found made of pottery or porce-
lain. Netsuke, usually made of wood, ivory, metal, or stone, and beads,
usually of metal, are also made of pottery. Even hairpins are sometimes
made of pottery or of white porcelain, wrought in the shape of plum blos-
soms. The collection contains a pottery mask, probably to be used on an
effigy of some kind.

Decorative Material
Pottery in various forms is used in decoration. Porcelain panels are
used in cabinets. The famous lacquer artist, Ritsu-o, introduced soft pot-
tery as well as other materials in the decoration of his work, and artists
following Ritsu-o's methods have made decorative panels in which pottery,
pearl, and lead were utilized in this way.

Toilet-Table

A number of pottery articles are used on the toilet-table,— boxes to hold
.
white powder, and special vessels to hold the water for mixing ; saucers for
a rouge-like paint ; low, wide bottles with narrow mouths to hold oil of the
seeds of camellia. Besides these one may find jars and other vessels used
in the blackening of teeth.

Gaines and Toys
Chess-boards of hard pottery are seen, with chessmen of porcelain, and
an infinite variety of toys in pottery, such as globular bells, little figures
of various kinds, and all the paraphernalia of the miniature gardens the
Japanese are so fond of constructing in trays of sand. Among objects for
this purpose are summer houses, bridges, fences, stone lanterns, figures,
and miniature trees.
Fencers have tied to the tops of their hoods a little fragile pottery plate
which breaks at the slightest blow.

Gardens

At the end of the veranda there is a receptacle for water, near which