Lot Essay
This massive and handsome bottle may have been commissioned for a 17th-century feudal lord. Perhaps the paulownia crest on the neck is associated with the owner. Bottles of this size and quality are extremely rare.
Ming-dynasty porcelain provided models for the decoration including the row of upright stiff leaves on the neck, the ru-i cloud collar and the design of "The three friends of winter" (plum, pine and bamboo) that encircles the body. The three friends are so named because each retains its vigor during the harshest season of the year. In China they were associated with the Confucian scholar-official who likewise endures in the face of adversity.
The painting of the three friends on this Arita bottle is dynamic and bold, painted with precision but also with an astonishing flair for drama. The entire surface is filled with a dense, jungle-like profusion of buds and blossoms, tree trunks and foliage. Bamboo leaves float in clusters in mid-air, apparently unattached to the trunk of the bamboo. A band of mist is lightly brushed along the bottom of the scene.
Evidence for the early date of the bottle is found in the imperfections of the glaze, such as pinholes and crazing. In a few places the glaze is unevenly applied and puddles to a pale bluish-green. The painter even left his fingerprints in faint cobalt blue to the right of the rock at the base of the old plum.
For a blue and white bottle of the same form and with similar decoration in the collection of the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford see Ayers, Impey and Mallet, eds., Porcelain for Palaces, The Fashion for Japan in Europe (London: Oriental Ceramic Society, 1990), pl. 43; see also Nihon toji meihin zuroku [Japanese Ceramics in the Toguri Collection] (Tokyo: Toguri Museum of Art, 1988), pl. 127
Ming-dynasty porcelain provided models for the decoration including the row of upright stiff leaves on the neck, the ru-i cloud collar and the design of "The three friends of winter" (plum, pine and bamboo) that encircles the body. The three friends are so named because each retains its vigor during the harshest season of the year. In China they were associated with the Confucian scholar-official who likewise endures in the face of adversity.
The painting of the three friends on this Arita bottle is dynamic and bold, painted with precision but also with an astonishing flair for drama. The entire surface is filled with a dense, jungle-like profusion of buds and blossoms, tree trunks and foliage. Bamboo leaves float in clusters in mid-air, apparently unattached to the trunk of the bamboo. A band of mist is lightly brushed along the bottom of the scene.
Evidence for the early date of the bottle is found in the imperfections of the glaze, such as pinholes and crazing. In a few places the glaze is unevenly applied and puddles to a pale bluish-green. The painter even left his fingerprints in faint cobalt blue to the right of the rock at the base of the old plum.
For a blue and white bottle of the same form and with similar decoration in the collection of the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford see Ayers, Impey and Mallet, eds., Porcelain for Palaces, The Fashion for Japan in Europe (London: Oriental Ceramic Society, 1990), pl. 43; see also Nihon toji meihin zuroku [Japanese Ceramics in the Toguri Collection] (Tokyo: Toguri Museum of Art, 1988), pl. 127