Large neo-Jōmon pot

From Otaru, Hokkaidō, Japan
Yayoi period (300 BC - AD 300) or later

Low-fired pottery

This beautifully balanced pot has a wide mouth and comparatively narrow foot. It comes from Otaru in the large northern island of Hokkaidō, where Jōmon-type culture, with its characteristic cord-patterned pottery, continued well into the Yayoi period (about 300 BC - AD 300) and perhaps later, and is therefore known as 'Neo-Jōmon'.

The rim of this piece is highly decorated, and some care has been used in applying the cord designs all over the body.

Such pieces were described by Heinrich von Siebold (1852-1908) as pottery of the Ainu people (an indigenous people of Hokkaidō, who had once also inhabited northern Honshū). Heinrich was the second son of Philipp Franz von Siebold, a German doctor who had worked at the Dutch trading-post in Nagasaki from 1823 to 1829. Heinrich first went to Japan in 1869. He took a great interest in continuing his father's collecting work and in the autumn of 1877 undertook some archaeological excavations at the ōmori shell-mound at the same time as his rival Edward Morse.

L. Smith, V. Harris and T. Clark, Japanese art: masterpieces in (London, The British Museum Press, 1990)