STUDIES IN JAPANESE ART 257 



and fishes. They are wrought in coloured materials 

 upon such objects as ivory boxes, fan handles, 

 buttons, and the like, carved with the utmost 

 fidelity in netsuke, sculptured and inlaid in bronzes, 

 painted on fans, screens, and all articles of porce- 

 lain, faience, and lacquer. 



I should like to have been able to give here the 

 figure of a beautiful bronze in my possession of an 

 Eagle with outstretched wings, by a Japanese artist. 

 The modeller had evidently made a study from 

 Nature, and the fidelity with which the extended 

 wing feathers have been copied in metal is very 

 remarkable. 



There is perhaps nothing which astonishes the 

 student of Japanese art so much as the immense 

 variety which it presents in the treatment of natural 

 objects. This, say the authors of the work above 

 quoted, is to be accounted for by the fact that each 

 work is the result of individual genius. Manu- 

 factories, in our sense of the word, may be said to 

 have been unknown In the best days of the empire ; 

 each and every artist or artisan worked out his own 

 inspirations according to his own ideas, and in his 

 own way. Hence it is that we find in almost every 

 thing which has come from Japan so much variety 

 and originality. 



