KERAMC STUDIO 
177 
HISTORIC ORNAMENT— JAPANESE 
HE art of ornamentation in Japan was formed under the influence of the Chinese 
so that it is as difficult to distinguish the work of the Japanese from that of 
the Chinese in the older objects of art. This is especially noticeable in the 
Satsuma faience and the Cloisonne enamel work, both of which are executed 
by Chinese and Japanese alike, only the connoisseur being able to distinguish 
by knowledge of the characteristics of the two peoples. For instance, the 
Chinese use one form of dragon, the Japanese another. Of late years, how- 
ever, there has grown up in Japan a wonderful, individual, and truly artistic 
feeling for decoration, so that no people on the face of the earth have pro- 
duced so suggestive, so true, so satisfying an art. The secret of this success 
is the simplicity and suggestiveness of their decoration, the delicacy and 
breadth of their technique and their fidelity to nature while avoiding belittling details. It is difficult 
to understand how such powerful effects can be produced by means so simple. We should carefully 
study the bold use of color and drawing, which, directed by Asiatic taste, produces such marvellous 
results. The Japanese are thoroughly in love with movement and life, and make their decorations 
fairly vibrate with the intensity of this feeling. They exert themselves to observe all the phenomena 
of creation, and produce optical effects which give the illusion of action, both design and color lending to 
this effect. This needs an extended knowledge and interest in nature, and ingenuousness backed 
by positive and scientific information. In this way the artist sees much that the average person 
passes by in ignorance. Herein lies the province and the success of the artist. His power is shown 
by his ability to recall to the eyes and heart of the world, the truths of nature which seeing, they have 
not seen, but which their souls recognize with a thrill of delight as something familiar long since, but 
eluding their grasp. The advantage of suggestive rather than positive decoration lies in this, that each 
one, for himself, discovers the meaning, rather than has it forced upon him, and to the delight of 
familiar recognition adds the prouder joy of original creation. The mind is exhilirated and stimulated 
to further growth while with a positive representation it feels that there is the end— there is no beyond. 
" The divers arts are simple fragments of the universal poem of nature." And he is the great artist 
who can gently lead us away from the prose of artificial life into the rhyme and rythm of nature 
without our knowing that we are led, for we all like the feeling of leading ourselves. 
The Japanese seem to see beauty in every form of life but the human, which is always drawn 
grotesque or mimicing some emotion. The truth is we are all too much at home with human nature 
and its attendant discords and sorrows, and the Jap recognizes that the duty of art is to lead us away 
from ourselves into green pastures where refreshment awaits us, and so he puts . before us only the 
beautiful or the amusing. 
Many of the geometric or conventional forms used in decoration are simple expressions of nature, 
we can not always interpret them because we are blind, comparatively speaking. Take the whirling 
ornament (No. 1). This movement is found in all growths on the surface of the water, the zig-zags 
(No. 2) suggest the pebbles in the current or in this case the widening circles about ducks in 
a pond. The flowing lines so often found, suggest running water. And what movement in the 
flying birds ! You can feel the wind in their feathers. Everything suggests a lightness of hand, a 
