334 ART INDUSTRY AND RELATED OCCUPATIONS. 



character. But the porcelain works of Stockholm, which, as also 

 some of our German factories, are furnished with a very fine raw 

 material in the white-burning felspar (Mikroline) from the neigh- 

 bouring islands of Ytterby, have evidently felt the impress of the 

 new tendency and taste. The celebrated factories of Rorstrand 

 and Gustavsberg, which are among the oldest in Europe, and have 

 received high distinction in competition with other countries, 

 seemed to have taken from the Japanese partly the form and 

 decoration and partly only the ge7ire of the latter. Under the 

 first class there were two four-cornered vases — not at all successful 

 copies — painted with Japanese girls who showed the blonde hair of 

 the Scandinavians. But wherever they had freely followed Jap- 

 anese manner, only in fine antique forms, e.g.^ in two other vases 

 ornamented with Swedish grasses and wild flowers, the truth, and 

 free, easy and forcible treatment delighted every art lover. 



My consideration of Japanese art industry is almost ended. 

 On page 4 of the beautiful work of C. von Liitzow, " Kunst und 

 Kunstgewerbe auf der Wiener Weltaustellung," J. Falk says 

 especially relative to Japan, " By means of Universal Exhibitions, 

 the highly coloured and decorative art of the Orient has come 

 forth from its isolation and retirement. It has become a great power 

 in Europe, making itself forcibly felt in its industry, and threaten- 

 ing in some departments to entirely revolutionize its taste." If 

 this expression was justified by what followed the Vienna Exhibi- 

 tion on the Prater in 1873, it is confirmed still more by the de- 

 velopment in art industry shown in 1878 on the Champ de Mars 

 in Paris. I do not consider an entire revolution in European taste 

 through Japanese influence possible in any branch; but rather a 

 continuance for some time yet of blind imitation of Japanese 

 models. They have in my opinion no direct steady value, but 

 serve indirectly, through refinement of taste and its wider spread 

 among us, to work against a one-sided unnatural conventionalism, 

 and to lead us more to nature as a teacher. It is not the blind 

 imitation, but acceptance of the light, pleasing manner of their art, 

 that will essentially aid our art industry and tend to the further 

 development of that fine taste of which the French minister, in his 

 speech at the distribution of the prizes in Paris, 1878, said so 

 aptly : 



" Le o^out est la fecondit^ du travail." 



WOOD-INDUSTRY. 



Furniture making. — Inlaid Work. — Peculiarities of Turnery in the 

 Hakone Mountai?is and Nikko. — Comb-cutting. — Straw Mosaics. 



It has already been stated that Japanese architecture, like that 

 of Eastern Asia generally, is not, as in the European civilization, 

 the oldest and most eminent exponent of art, but that its wood 



