432 ART INDUSTRY AND RELATED OCCUPATIONS. 



kets for its thirteen yellow and brown glowing plates. From the 

 former, Chinese junks carry the material to the dealers in China 

 and Japan, but the best comes to the ports of Japan from London. 

 When it has a light gold-yellow colour and is very transparent, it is 

 used in Japan especially for Kanzashi, or fork-shaped hair-pins for 

 young ladies, highly appreciated and dear in price, some of them i6 

 centimeters long. Besides these, girls of the wealthier classes wear 

 a straight four-cornered little wand of the same material, and from 

 21 to 26 centimeters long, horizontally through the carefully twisted 

 hair on the top of the head, so that the ends project on both sides. 



The Japanese manufacture also for the foreign market, in Naga- 

 saki particularly, all sorts of articles, as round table-tops, baskets, 

 dishes and plates, bracelets and napkin rings, cigar cases, and 

 various others from the real and factitious tortoise-shell, and 

 adorn them besides with gold lacquer painting, in which of course 

 the long ground-work process of common lacquering is omitted. 

 Inlaid work of tortoise-shell, the so-called Boule- (Buhl- or Bool-) 

 work, which for last two centuries had been so conspicuous in the 

 finer furniture of Europe, is little known in Japan, and it is some- 

 what striking that neither here nor in China have horn or tortoise- 

 shell been used for combs. 



In working up the tortoise shell in Nagasaki, the file, small saw 

 and chisel are used, and especially iron pincers with smooth broad 

 jaws. Each workman sits before his little charcoal furnace in 

 which he heats the tongs; He cools them somewhat in water be- 

 fore using, and welds the two plates of tortoise-shell, which are 

 sharpened at the edges, heated and laid one over the other, fast 

 together. Rings, plates and other articles are pressed in wooden 

 moulds after the material has been heated. Steam seems not to 

 be used in the process. 



Factitious tortoise-shell is much used. It is made of bright- 

 coloured horn or Tsuno from China. The tortoise-shell-like etch- 

 ing of horn seems to have been known and practised here much 

 earlier than in Europe. 



AO-GAI-ZAIKU, MoTHER-OF-PeARL WORK. 



Pearls and mother-of-pearl consist of thin laminae of lime with 

 little organic substance. But while they are found in concentric 

 layers in the pearls, in the latter they follow the horizontal direction 

 or trend of the shell, yet in such a way that even in flat mussel and 

 snail shells they lie somewhat inclined to the surface. The lustre 

 proceeds from the reflection of light, the iridescence or play of colour 

 from the interference of the rays which are reflected from the pro- 

 jecting edges of the laminae or blades and the somewhat deeper 

 parts. The colour-change or iridescence of mother-of-pearl con- 

 sequently is a phenomenon of interference which inheres in the 

 structure. 



