562 Mr. F. T. Piggott [March 11, 



it is not on our bizarre porcelain alone that this same quality of 

 composition is lacking, but (I speak this with very bated breath) all 

 our art seems to lack it altogether. 



^ ^ ^ ^ 7^ ^ ^ 



Time permits me to dwell only on one other feature of Japanesque 

 work which greatly grieves the souls of the elect. Of recent years 

 panels of doors have been decorated with boughs of trees which 

 begin in space, sprawl across one panel, are continued in imagination 

 behind the joint, to reappear and wander on across the second 

 panel. 



It violates our own canons of art, but it is supposed to derive 

 authority from the Japanese ; yet like every other Japanesque notion 

 it is entirely contrary to their idea. If a Japanese artist has to 

 ornament two panels of a screen with a continuous picture, he lays 

 them close together on the floor, and treating them as one, pro- 

 ceeds to paint his picture. Afterwards the panels are separated and 

 put into the frame of the screen. There is thus no notion of the 

 design being continued behind the frame. You will find the same 

 principle in any Japanese picture-book. The double-page illustra- 

 tions are deliberately cut down the middle and printed on opposite 

 pages. 



Double-page illustrations are a vexation of the spirit. We 

 have four ways of dealing with them, stitching-in, folding-down, 

 printing sideways, and mounting on a guard. I do not say that in 

 this case the Japanese way is the best, but at least it is not more 

 ruthless than stitching-in or folding-down, and is certainly more 

 convenient than printing sideways. 



I have, with your kind indulgence, abused Japanesque sufficiently 

 for one evening. I will endeavour to sum up its misdemeanours 

 in a single sentence. It conceived the Japanese art of ornament 

 to be merely the embodiment of eccentricity, and therefore to be 

 judged by other standards than those with which we had long been 

 familiar: it cultivated eccentricity in its turn, and substituted for 

 simplicity of style and vigour of execution crude designs and coarse 

 workmanship. 



I have talked more of Japanesque than of Japanese ; but I must 

 now carry out my threat of saying a few words on Japanese art, and 

 of showing you a few more specimens of it chiefly drawn from the 

 Shiba and Nikko temples. 



With the form of Japanese decorative art which I have chiefly 

 discussed this evening, the floral spray- work, most people are I 

 think familiar. But I do not think it is so generally known that 

 the art of the country, eclectic as is everything in Japan, embraces 

 as many different forms of expression as there are styles in 

 current use in the West. It is an eclectic art ; but nothing ever 

 passed into the service of the Japanese but it received the impres 



