438 ART INDUSTRY AND RELATED OCCUPATIONS, 



away in balls, indicates the amount of heat. The copper article 

 is then taken from the grate with a pair of tongs and coated with a 

 mixture of raw lac (Ki-urushi) or Seshime and lamp-black (Yuyen- 

 sumi). It is then heated again up to the point where the water 

 rolls away in balls, brushed over and painted anew with the lac 

 > mixture, and so on, till colour and lustre have the desired shade, 

 whereupon the work is finished and the article is set aside for a 

 second cooling. 



Kanaya Gorosaburo told me that he obtained the same patina 

 with bronze by a quite similar process. He maintained further 

 that many workmen used vegetable wax instead of lac, but that 

 such an Iro-tsuke (process of colouring) could not be recommended. 

 It is striking, however, that the lac or its substitute is not car- 

 bonized by the heat. 



Fig. 1 6 is a woodcut showing a copper box ; and fig. 17 (p. 439) 

 shows its cover. The box is plated on the inside with thick silver 



Fig. 16.— COPPER BOX WITH INLAID WORK. 



{Property of the Royal Industrial Art Museum, Berlin) 



plate, and the outside coloured a dull greyish brown. Its inlaying 

 of the clouds on the sides is done in gold. 



The most beautiful part is the ornamentation of the cover in 

 surface-relief, showing a hill with a rivulet winding around it. 

 The prominent figure well placed, chased and represented for 

 raised inlaid work (in which both the gold and silver alloys, Shaku- 

 do and Shibuichi are used) is the cock ; his comb and the short 

 tail-feathers which are seen on the wings and back are of natural 

 copper colour ; the copper tail is bronzed in blackish brown. 

 Wings, cheek and throat are of several shades of gold-yellow, also 

 the legs ; the feathers of the back arranged like a row of tiles, are 

 coloured silver-grey by means of Shibuichi, likewise the little 

 chicken hurrying to the water, all except the gold-coloured legs. 

 The artist, in order to represent the sun shining upon its head and 

 throat, has used pure glistening silver. The Wistaria, which gives 

 the picture a beautiful finish, has its stems and under leaves 



