- Title
- Sake Bottle with Landscape Design
- Date Made
- late 18th-early 19th century
- Period
- Edo period (1603-1868)
- Medium
- Hirado Mikawachi ware; porcelain with blue underglaze
- Dimensions
- 3 3/4 x 3 3/4 in. (9.5 x 9.5 cm)
- Accession Number
- AC1998.115.27
- Collecting Area
- Japanese Art
- Curatorial Notes
The “golden age” of Hirado porcelain is generally considered to be roughly the mid-eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth century. The whiteness of the clay improved, the variety of shapes and sizes expanded, and designs evidenced a greater influence of Japanese aesthetics. Landscape became a popular motif for Hirado decorators, who reproduced scenes from paintings and woodblock-printed design manuals. Hired to decorate Hirado wares, professional painters transmitted to porcelain forms bird, animal, and flower motifs as well as landscapes and figural designs modeled on traditional themes of long-established painting schools. In the latter part of the eighteenth century, there was a tendency to decorate more of the surface. On this sake bottle, while the focal point of the design—the tall rocky mountain and multistoried pagoda—appears on one side, landscape elements, including patches of rocky ground with plants, and boats on the water encircle the form.
2025
- Selected Bibliography
- Singer, Robert; Hollis Goodall. Hirado Porcelain of Japan: From the Kurtzman Family Collection.
Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1997.
