3i8 ART INDUSTRY AND RELATED OCCUPATIONS. 



ducts, and especially in embroidery, or compare ihe artistic forms 

 and decorations which to-day distinguish the work of our gold 

 and silversmiths, with the many awkward and tasteless specimens 

 of preceding periods. 



Bad models, abundantly set and followed, spoil the taste as 

 inevitably as in morals bad examples corrupt good manners. Good 

 designs of figure and decoration are thus necessary also in art 

 industry, in order to refine the taste and to guide tastes already 

 refined. To obtain them we went back to the operations of art 

 industry in the Middle Ages, and even farther, to the antique. 

 They were sought and found also in the far Orient, among Arabs, 

 Persians and Indians, and even beyond the boundaries of Aryan 

 nations, among the Mongolians of the Chinese system of civiliza- 

 tion, especially in China and Japan. The manifold productions 

 of Japanese art industry in particular, which are brought to Europe 

 and North America by almost every ship, and reach even the 

 smallest inland cities, have exercised a powerful influence on many 

 branches of Western European art industry. This has been shown 

 to a surprising degree in the Industrial Exhibitions of the last 

 sixteen years, notably in the great Paris Exhibition of 1878. So 

 much has been written concerning it, as well as of the history 

 and peculiarity of Japanese art industry, that it may seem almost 

 superfluous for me to attempt in the following treatises to discuss 

 the subject in a comprehensive and perhaps a somewhat original 

 way. I am moved to it by the consciousness that I had a better 

 occasion and opportunity to make a thorough study of the art 

 handicraft of the Japanese than has been the case with most of 

 its reviewers hitherto. 



Architecture, which among Aryan nations has the most notable 

 and powerful influence upon art industry, has not developed any 

 such high significance in Chinese civilization. All its architectural 

 creations are perishable wooden buildings, and only exceptionally 

 make any monumental impression. The most important are 

 Buddhist temples, which seem weighed down and burdened under 

 their disproportionally heavy roofs. They exhibit a multiform 

 wooden ornamentation which may indeed be the expression of a 

 rich fancy, but seldom however, with the exception of the carving, 

 is a sign of a particularly developed artistic sense. 



Art industry among those Eastern Asiatic people has its centre 

 in the many little productions which they form out of plastic clay, 

 metal, wood, and ivory. These are richly decorated partly with 

 lacquer and enamel colours, partly with engraving, chasing, inlay- 

 ing with metal, and an extremely tasteful use cf curves, and even 

 more of straight and broken lines. So also is it in textile industry, 

 from simple weaving to the most complicated silk or cotton fabrics. 

 In Japan as in China, it is in the art of lacquering, fine ceramics 

 enamel, chasing and inlaid work, especially bronze work and forg- 

 ing of weapons, also wood, ivory, bone and stone cutting, and in 



