did lacquer-work suit their taste and talent, that they were already producing triumphs in this branch of art at an epoch when England was still rent by the barbarous struggles of the Heptarchy. The highest perfection was, however, not reached at once. The end of the fifteenth century may be said to have been the dawn of the classic age, which, culminating about the year 1700, lasted on through the whole eighteenth century and the first half of the nineteenth.
Appreciation of lacquer is a taste which has to be acquired, but which, when acquired, grows upon one, and places the best lacquer in the category of almost sacred things. To show a really fine piece casually to a new-comer, or to send it home as a gift to one of the uncultivated natives of Europe or America, is, as the Japanese proverb says, "like giving guineas to a cat." He will take it up for an instant, just glance at it, say "What a pretty little thing!" and put it down again, imagining it to be worth at most a couple of dollars. Not improbably it cost a hundred, and was the outcome of years of patient toil and marvellous art.
The material employed is the sap which exudes from the lacquer-tree (Rhus vernicifera) when incised. This tapping for lacquer, as it may perhaps be called, affords a means of livelihood to a special class of men, who, on the approach of mild weather in April, spread all over the northern provinces of the empire, where the best lacquer-trees grow, and continue their operations on into the autumn. The age of the tree, the season when the tree is tapped, and the treatment to which the sap is afterwards subjected—as, for instance, by being mixed with iron filings, turpentine, or charred wood—produce widely different kinds of lacquer, which are accordingly appropriated to different uses. Every species of lacquer turns black on exposure to the light; and it is a fact, mysterious but undoubtedly authentic, that lacquer dries most quickly in a damp atmosphere. The damper the atmosphere and the darker the room, so much the more quickly will the lacquer harden.
