Excerpt from Catalogue of the Morse Collection of Japanese Pottery The collection of Japanese pottery herein briefly catalogued has been brought together by one collector, who throughout the task (which is by no means ended) has had in view certain definite objects. One of these objects, and the main one, has been to make a collection of the pottery of Japan which should parallel the famous collections of the potteries of England, Holland, France, and adjacent countries, as seen in the museums of Europe. In the great museums of art in Paris, Berlin, and other places, one may find the pottery of the various countries of Europe fully represented. These collections often represent the ovens and signatures known from the earliest time to the latest. Turning to Japan, the greatest pottery-producing country in the world, one often finds in a case labeled "Oriental Porcelain" a small collection of miscellaneous pieces, with highly decorated specimens made for the foreign market predominating, and these not unusually mingled with the fictile products of China. In France, for example, one may find in her great museums extensive collections of English pottery from Chelsea, Leeds, Staffordshire, Burslam, and other pottery centres, including, of course, representations of all the great potters such as Astbury, Elers, and Wedgwood, as well as the work of the minor potters. Turning from these cases to the Japanese section, if by good fortune the museum possesses one, the contrast is striking. Such an absence of due proportion would be paralleled by a general zoological museum displaying, for example, a complete collection of European and North American insects, and for South America possessing a few bright butterflies and the elytra of metallic-lustred beetles mounted as jewelry. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.