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Lot Essay
The elegant Louis XIV 'shell'-parquetried strong-box is brass-enriched with a fretted 'Japanese' style lock-cartouche and lily-flowered ribbon-bands in the Flemish manner. Its ornament corresponds to that of the portable 17th-century coffret or jewel-and-document chests, such as that listed in the Duchess of Lauderdale's apartment at Ham House, Richmond in 1677 (Peter Thornton, 'The Furnishing of Ham House', Furniture History, vol. XVI [1980], fig 68).
Bottles of this form are first recorded in 1687 and are often found undecorated or with later Dutch enamels, such as that in the collection of the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, illustrated in T. Volker, The Japanese Porcelain Trade of the Dutch East India Company after 1683 (Leiden,1959), pl. 18. Volker mentions that in 1687 on 'October 25th they ship to Batavia by the "Moercapel" . . . 100 small flasks going with the sandalwood small cabinets'. Few examples with the Kakiemon palette as above are known, although a smaller example with a different design is illustrated in Ashmolean Museum, Eastern Ceramics and other Works of Art from the Collection of Gerald Reitlinger: Catalogue of the Memorial Exhibition (Oxford, 1981), cat. no. 170.
These important bottles probably formed part of a special order from the Dutch East India Company. A fitted Dutch-Indonesian casket containing nine blue-and-white Arita bottles of similar form, with the VOC monogram (Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie or Dutch East India Company) in the collection of the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, is illustrated in D.F. Lunsingh Scheurleer, Chinesisches und japanisches Porzellan in europaischen Fassungen, p. 394, and exhibited in Oriental Ceramic Society, Porcelain for Palaces: The Fashion for Japan in Europe, 1650-1750 (London, 1990).
The exceptional quality of the paintings of bijin is reflected in a number of celebrated mid- and late-century ukiyo-e hanging scrolls and screens in Japanese and American collections; such paintings, although they were executed in the metropolitan centres of Osaka and (mostly) Kyoto, clearly influenced the decision-making process in distant Arita, for several decades after they first became popular. Significant large-scale examples include a set of seven bijin first published by Takamizawa Tadao in 1927 in Shoki ukiyo-e shuho [Collected treasures of early ukiyo-e] and a set of eleven (mounted as separate panels) in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, which has recently been dated to the Kan'ei-Keian eras (1624-1652). For these and further examples see Kobayashi Tadashi in Takeda Tsuneo et. al. (ed.), Nihon byobu-e shusei 14: Fuzokuga: Yuraku, Tagasode [Survey of Japanese screens 14: Genre: Entertainments, Kimono screens] (Tokyo 1977), cat. nos. 79 and 81; Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Bosuton bijutsukan nikuhitsu ukiyo-e [Ukiyo-e paintings in the BMFA] (Tokyo, 2000), cat. nos. 11-21; Miyeko Murase ed., Bridge of Dreams: The Mary Griggs Burke Collection of Japanese Art ((New York, 2000), cat. no. 144; and Kyoto Kokuritsu Hakubutsukan [Kyoto National Museum], Hana, Miyako no modo, kimono no jidai [Kyoto Style: Trends in 16th-19th Century Kimono] (Kyoto, 1999), cat. no.82.
Bottles of this form are first recorded in 1687 and are often found undecorated or with later Dutch enamels, such as that in the collection of the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, illustrated in T. Volker, The Japanese Porcelain Trade of the Dutch East India Company after 1683 (Leiden,1959), pl. 18. Volker mentions that in 1687 on 'October 25th they ship to Batavia by the "Moercapel" . . . 100 small flasks going with the sandalwood small cabinets'. Few examples with the Kakiemon palette as above are known, although a smaller example with a different design is illustrated in Ashmolean Museum, Eastern Ceramics and other Works of Art from the Collection of Gerald Reitlinger: Catalogue of the Memorial Exhibition (Oxford, 1981), cat. no. 170.
These important bottles probably formed part of a special order from the Dutch East India Company. A fitted Dutch-Indonesian casket containing nine blue-and-white Arita bottles of similar form, with the VOC monogram (Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie or Dutch East India Company) in the collection of the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, is illustrated in D.F. Lunsingh Scheurleer, Chinesisches und japanisches Porzellan in europaischen Fassungen, p. 394, and exhibited in Oriental Ceramic Society, Porcelain for Palaces: The Fashion for Japan in Europe, 1650-1750 (London, 1990).
The exceptional quality of the paintings of bijin is reflected in a number of celebrated mid- and late-century ukiyo-e hanging scrolls and screens in Japanese and American collections; such paintings, although they were executed in the metropolitan centres of Osaka and (mostly) Kyoto, clearly influenced the decision-making process in distant Arita, for several decades after they first became popular. Significant large-scale examples include a set of seven bijin first published by Takamizawa Tadao in 1927 in Shoki ukiyo-e shuho [Collected treasures of early ukiyo-e] and a set of eleven (mounted as separate panels) in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, which has recently been dated to the Kan'ei-Keian eras (1624-1652). For these and further examples see Kobayashi Tadashi in Takeda Tsuneo et. al. (ed.), Nihon byobu-e shusei 14: Fuzokuga: Yuraku, Tagasode [Survey of Japanese screens 14: Genre: Entertainments, Kimono screens] (Tokyo 1977), cat. nos. 79 and 81; Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Bosuton bijutsukan nikuhitsu ukiyo-e [Ukiyo-e paintings in the BMFA] (Tokyo, 2000), cat. nos. 11-21; Miyeko Murase ed., Bridge of Dreams: The Mary Griggs Burke Collection of Japanese Art ((New York, 2000), cat. no. 144; and Kyoto Kokuritsu Hakubutsukan [Kyoto National Museum], Hana, Miyako no modo, kimono no jidai [Kyoto Style: Trends in 16th-19th Century Kimono] (Kyoto, 1999), cat. no.82.