Kakiemon ware lidded jar
From Japan
Edo period,
around AD 1680
The Japanese started making porcelain at the
end of the sixteenth century using techniques learnt from Korean
immigrants. They gradually developed their skills, reaching the
height of perfection towards the end of the 1660s when this jar was
made.
Kakiemon ware has an
opaque white glaze applied over the clay to give an exquisite milky
white ground
(nigoshide). Against
this background the coloured enamel designs can be applied with
greater effect. Reds, greens, blues and yellows are commonly
used.
Kakiemon ware was
first made by Sakaida Kizaemon (1596–1666). He developed a
distinctive orangey enamel, the colour of persimmons (Japanese:
kaki) and subsequently
changed his name to Kakiemon. Three hundred years later, Sakaida
Kakiemon XIV (born 1934) is still producing the distinctive
porcelain in Saga Prefecture, Northern
Kyūshū.
With the decline of
the Chinese Ming dynasty (in about AD 1660) Japan took over as the
main supplier of export porcelain to Europe, in a trade monopolized
by the Dutch East India Company. Objects like this lidded jar came
to ornament the stately homes and palaces of Europe, such as
Hampton Court. Many copies were made by European ceramists in the
eighteenth century.
L. Smith, V. Harris and T. Clark, Japanese art: masterpieces in (London, The British Museum Press, 1990)