LATE 17TH CENTURY

In addition to the well-known categories of Japanese secular export lacquer - coffers, cabinets, dishes and the like - there is evidence that at least as early as the second decade of the 17th century several other forms were being privately commissioned, among them candlesticks, "spout pots", "standing cups", "tankard" and "beakers" [see 1 below]. Later in the century, when the Dutch were the only Europeans permitted to reside in Japan at the small trading post of Dejima in Kyushu, "the ledgers of trade...give no indication of the genuine volume of goods that were actually exchanged" and there is often an enormous discrepancy between the number of objects registered by the Japanese side and the number of objects reported as purchased by the Dutch [see 2 below]. Against this background, it is no surprise that from time to time one comes across such extremely rare survivals as the present case for clay pipes. The disposition of the plant designs on the exterior and the somewhat crude nashiji finish of the interior suggest a date in the third quarter of the 17th century, a time when even the official records occasionally mention the export to Bengal of such rarities as elephants' howdahs, palanquins and shields [see 3 below].

1 Earle, Joe, "Object of the month - Japanese export lacquer tankard", Orientations, 14/4 (Apr. 1983), 25-7

2 Screech, Timon, The Western Scientific Gaze and Popular Imagery in Late Edo Japan, (Cambridge, 1996), 11-12

3 Impey, Oliver, "Japanese Export Lacquer of the Seventeenth Century", in Watson, William (ed), Lacquerwork in Asia and beyond, (Colloquies on Art and Archaeology in Asia, No. 11, 22 June 1981; London, 1982), (124-58), 138-9