Height: 33.500
cm
Diameter: 17.900 cm
(base)
R.S. Jenyns Collection
Asia JA 1978.4-21.1
Rooms 92-94: Japan
Negoro ware sake bottle
From Japan
16th-17th
century AD
Vermilion and black lacquered ware
Negoro ware is named after its original place of manufacture at the Negoro temple in Japan's Kii Province during the fourteenth century. The objects are carved or turned from wood and then lacquered, first with black and then with vermilion. This sake bottle would have been for the priest's own use. Later such bottles came to be made as altar pieces in Shintō shrines.
Negoro wares are greatly prized for their appearance of antiquity, when with time the black layer becomes visible in patches through the vermilion layer. In modern times their simple yet powerful shapes are greatly admired.
L. Smith, V. Harris and T. Clark, Japanese art: masterpieces in (London, The British Museum Press, 1990)
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