Page 28 - J. P Morgan Collection of Chinese Art and Porcelain

PREFACE

efforts upon the adornment of Chinese porcelain, on
pieces, too, which, for the most part, were not what
we have learned to regard as the choicest.

When Chinese porcelain began to be largely imported
it so filled people's minds and commanded such prices

that it very naturally stimulated an intense ambition
to produce something like it. For a long time this
was sought in vain, the essential element of kaolin
being lacking; but potters everywhere were embarked
in the research and were bound to succeed. In the

meantime the Chinese porcelain was producing its
inevitable effect. Chinese shapes were appearing
everywhere. Chinese colors were being imitated, and
Chinese ideas and motives in decoration were being
adopted on all sides. In Saxony, Japanese porcelain
had been imported together with the Chinese, from
which it was not distinguished, and it was very suc-
cessfully and admirably imitated in soft paste, by
Bottger, before the art of making hard paste was dis-
covered. These imitations of Japanese porcelain were
wonderful, and they imparted a character to German
porcelain that it has never lost, and which, moreover,
affected all other European porcelain, and has, equally
ever since, continued to exert its influence. This was

no art of Bottger's, for his art was mostly that of a
counterfeiter, but was due to the work of a Japanese
artist named Kakiyemon, whose white porcelain, dec-
orated with simple isolated designs, whether of sprays
of flowers, blossoms, trees, foliage, or animals, com-
pletely enthralled Bottger. The prevailing feature
of Kakiyemon's work was the projection, on the white
field, of an isolated design, and his color scheme was
of the simplest imaginable. In his own country he
had introduced his personal art from China, where he
had acquired it, and it was as potent in Japan as
elsewhere, becoming immortal in the productions of
Imari. In Europe its effect was universal, spreading

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