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Updated: May 19, 2025
She wondered if she ought to be offended by his caress. Then she wondered if he liked her hat, the new Oriental turban of rose and silver brocade. He dropped her hand. His elbow brushed her shoulder. He flitted over to the desk-chair, his thin back stooped. He picked up the cloisonne vase. Across it he peered at her with such loneliness that she was startled.
Beyond was a gallery of women busied in cutting and setting slabs of artificial ruby, and next these were men and women busied together upon the slabs of copper net that formed the basis of cloisonne tiles. Many of these workers had lips and nostrils a livid white, due to a disease caused by a peculiar purple enamel that chanced to be much in fashion.
"But, Sire, we simply could not stand that stuff without the purple," said Asano. "In your days people could stand such crudities, they were nearer the barbaric by two hundred years." They continued along one of the lower galleries of this cloisonné factory, and came to a little bridge that spanned a vault.
In ancient times the making of woolen garments was considered just as much of an art in Cashmere as painting or sculpture in France and Germany, porcelain work in China or cloisonne work in Japan, and no matter how long a weaver was engaged upon a garment, he was sure to find somebody with sufficient taste and money to buy it.
An arm reliquary bears the inscription in raised Lombardic letters: "Ego Chacia usor Dimitrii feci fieri hoc opus." It is of plain metal enriched with filigree, and set with stones and patterned cloisonné enamels, and stands upon a triangular cast base with three feet; on each side is a winged figure with sceptre and orb amid twelfth-century scroll-work.
She lifted the lid of a rare old cloisonné rose-jar that had stood on the end of the mantel for a longer time than Lloyd's memory could reach, and took out a small box. Taking off the cover, she disclosed what appeared to be a ripe cherry with a bee clinging to its side. "Take the bee in yoah thumb and fingah and pull," she ordered. "See? It's a cunning little tape-measuah for her work-basket."
"Yes," she repeated, smiling, "some one who loved me. Tell me about this," she pleaded, touching a vase of Cloisonne. "It came from Japan," he said, "a strange world of people like those painted on a fan. The streets are narrow and there are quaint houses on either side. The little ladies flit about in gay attire, like so many butterflies they wear queer shoes on their dainty feet.
Seeing the tears in her eyes, he said kindly: "Well, I never thought Mariquita's marriage counted for much. Do you remember how you took her in one night when old de Rojas hid in a cloisonne vase on the verandah for cover and potted at the stars with his gun?" But in his voice she read wonder that for the first time in his life he should have found his honest mother forging a moral attitude.
From Tokio I went to Kioto, formerly the residence of the Mikado, now purely a native city, with no modern buildings and still narrower streets; but it is the centre of the cloisonné, damascening and embroidery industries. Hotels in Japan are everywhere quite good. Here I visited the fencing and jiu-jitsu schools, which are attended by a large number of pupils, women as well as men.
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