Hizen Ware Early Imari Plate with Rabbit and Cloud Design
Japan, Saga prefecture, Arita kilns, Hizen Ware Early Imari Plate with Rabbit and Cloud Design, 1630s/1640s, porcelain with reserve design against a spattered ground of underglaze cobalt blue, Gift of Mary and Cheney Cowles, public domain, 2018.76.21
This work is not currently on view.
- Title
Hizen Ware Early Imari Plate with Rabbit and Cloud Design
- Related Titles
original language: 初期伊万里染付吹墨白兔紋皿
- Date
1630s/1640s
- Period
Japan: Edo period (1615-1868)
- Medium
porcelain with reserve design against a spattered ground of underglaze cobalt blue
- Dimensions (H x W x D)
1 1/2 in x 7 5/8 in diam.
- Collection Area
Asian Art
- Category
Ceramics
Traditional Ceramics
- Object Type
plate
- Culture
Japanese
- Credit Line
Gift of Mary and Cheney Cowles
- Accession Number
2018.76.21
- Copyright
public domain
- Terms
From Poetic Imagination in Japanese Art: Selections from the Collection of Mary and Cheney Cowles
The town of Arita in Hizen Province (present-day Saga Prefecture), Kyushu, has been a major center for the production of porcelain since the early seventeenth century. As with Karatsu ware, another type of ceramics manufactured in Kyushu, the tradition originated with Korean émigré potters. Because these porcelains reached the West through the port of Imari, they are also known as Imari ware.
This plate illustrates the rapid development of Arita porcelains over the course of a few decades. The thickly potted earlier plate, with its stenciled rabbit and cloud design, is very close to Korean prototypes. The thinly potted later plate, with its complex combination of hand-painted and molded ornamentation and a barbed rim, is both more ambitious and technically accomplished. Most scholars attribute the change to the arrival in Arita of Chinese potters from Jingdezhen who were seeking employment after the fall of the Ming dynasty in China in 1644.
- Exhibitions
2018 Poetic Imagination in Japanese Art: Selections from the Collection of Mary and Cheney Cowles Portland Art Museum
