- Title
- Charger with Flower-filled Vases
- Date Made
- circa 1690
- Period
- Edo period (1603-1868)
- Medium
- Imari ware; porcelain with glaze and over-glaze enamels
- Dimensions
- 2 3/4 × 17 1/2 × 17 1/2 in. (6.99 × 44.45 × 44.45 cm)
- Accession Number
- M.2023.190.1
- Collecting Area
- Japanese Art
- Curatorial Notes
This charger is an early example of the Imari style, named after the port near Arita, Japan, known for its porcelain production. It features a design painted in underglaze cobalt blue with overglaze enamel decoration alluding to Chinese motifs. The scene is a Chinese garden patio, its tiled floor covered with flower-filled vases; balustrades and ornamental rocks encircle the plate’s rim. This type of garden architecture often symbolized the idea of China in Japanese art, especially during a time when Japan was under a national seclusion policy.
The rise of porcelain in Japan was significantly influenced by the geopolitics of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Korean potters were compelled to move to Japan due to invasions by Toyotomi Hideyoshi in the 1590s. Concurrently, Chinese potters relocated to Japan to escape the political turmoil attending the fall of the Ming dynasty (1368−1644), which caused a halt in porcelain production at the Jingdezhen kilns until around the 1680s, during the early decades of the Qing dynasty (1644−1912). These potters brought their expertise in making and decorating porcelain to the Arita area of Kyushu Island at a time when Jingdezhen was unable to supply global demand for those goods, thus allowing Japan to fill the gap in production.
Hollis Goodall and Rika Hiro
2023/2025