ABSTRACT
The Japanese ceramics were the products of artists whose designing was under the patronage of a feudal lord-industrial art in one sense, but aristocratic as regards its standards and the control of the industry. Today everything is different. The appeal is to the market, and concessions made to its demands are many, often departing from the esthetic standards under which the older workers operated. Factory conditions for this kind of work have been slow in changing. Nagoya is the home of the famous Ando firm of cloisonne makers. Favored visitors to the store there are led through a charming little thatched roof gate into a typical formal Japanese garden to view the factory. There are several small houses clustered around the courtyard, each clean and, in good weather, entirely open on three sides. In the first sit the workers who make the metal foundation, in another those who draw the design and solder the gold and silver wires onto the plain metal, in still another a man grinds colored glass into a fine powder for the painters who patiently apply it to every portion of the intricate pattern. The original kilns are still being used in another house, but they have been modernized with electricity as the heat is more easily controlled than that of the charcoal fire of olden days. Then in a house less clean than the others sits the polisher, thoroughly covered with foamy paste, who rubs each piece of cloisonne with wet pumice until it shines. This homelike informal scene is the factory of the most famous cloisonne firm in Japan. It is a pity that the workers there are nearly all old men, the tediousness of the art being repellent to modern young men who, like Americans, are filled with a restless urge to do great things.
