Page 9 - Catalogue of the Edward Morse collection of Japanese pottery MFA BOSTON

PREFACE

The collection of Japanese pottery herein briefly catalogued has been
brought together by one collector, who throughout the task (which is by
no means ended) has had in view certain definite objects. One of these
objects, and the main one, has been to make a collection of the pottery of
Japan which should parallel the famous collections of the potteries of Eng-
land, Holland, France, and adjacent countries, as seen in the museums of
Europe.
In the great museums of art in Paris, Berlin, and other places, one may
find the pottery of the various countries of Europe fully represented.
These collections often represent the ovens and signatures known from
the earliest time to the latest. Turning to Japan, the greatest pottery-pro-
ducing country in the world, one often finds in a case labeled " Oriental
Porcelain " a small collection of miscellaneous pieces, with highly deco-
rated specimens made for the foreign market predominating, and these not
unusually mingled with the fictile products of China. In France, for exam-
ple, one may find in her great museums extensive collections of English
pottery from Chelsea, Leeds, Staffordshire, Burslam, and other pottery
centres, including, of course, representations of all the great potters such
as Astbury, Elers, and Wedgwood, as well as the work of the minor pot-
ters. Turning from these cases to the Japanese section, if by good fortune
the museum possesses one, the contrast is striking. Such an absence of
due proportion would be paralleled by a general zoological museum dis-
playing, for example, a complete collection of European and North Amer-
ican insects, and for South America possessing a few bright butterflies
and the elytra of metallic-lustred beetles mounted as jewelry. I am thus
explicit in justification of the apparently redundant exhibition of specimens
in some of the provincial groupings, and the display of certain specimens

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