Quite a different spirit was, however, brought in by Zengoro Riyozen, the tenth descendant of a famous family of potters. This Zengoro was a potter of universal genius, the foremost ceramic artist indeed of the peaceful and luxurious period at the beginning of the nineteenth century, when the Tokugawa Shogun at Tokiyo set an example of an extravagant expenditure and brilliant display which was only too readily followed at the courts of the great feudal nobles. In the art work of that time, in spite of the unsurpassed perfection of execution and love of gorgeous decoration, we can already trace the signs of a coming decay. Zengoro, besides reviving with some success the deep sapphire blue, _sous couverte_, of Ming times, succeeded in producing from an iron-oxide a red ground which vied with the famous coral reds of the previous century in China. But it was rather the Ming red, _sous couverte_, that made from ‘powdered rubies of the West,’ that he professed to copy. Over the red ground of his plates and little bowls he painted his design in gold of the finest quality, and on the white ground of the inside placed a scant decoration of his under-glaze sapphire blue. Some of these dainty little cups are shown in a table-case in the British Museum, but if we compare them with the exquisite Ming bowls of a deep red derived from copper in the same collection, the difference of the quality of the two tints is at once apparent. As, however, it was a matter of _convenance_ to go back to a Ming model, it was with the latter ware that Zengoro’s work was compared. It was for his success in this kind of decoration (produced about the years 1806-1817) that the great Kioto potter received from his patron, the prince of Kishiu, a seal with the character _yeiraku_, or reading in modern Chinese _Yung-lo_, the name of the Ming emperor (1402-24) with whom the red copper glaze is traditionally associated (PL. B. 22).[125] This, then, is the origin of the name _Yeiraku kinrande_ for the ‘gold brocade’ ware of Zengoro. At a later time this form of decoration was carried by Zengoro’s son to Kaga, where in a debased form it became characteristic of a ware with which our markets were at one time flooded.