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Teapot
Unknown - Enlarge image
Teapot
- Place of origin:
Arita, Japan (teapot, made)
Europe (mounts, made) - Date:
1680-1700 (made)
- Artist/Maker:
Unknown (production)
- Materials and Techniques:
Porcelain, with Kakiemon-style decoration, and silver-gilt mounts
- Museum number:
C.413&A-1909
- Gallery location:
British Galleries, room 56c, case 4
Object Type
This teapot is typical of the kind of Japanese porcelain made in connection with the growing interest in tea-drinking in late 17th-century Europe. The use of bright enamel colours on a fine white body is characteristic of the so-called Kakiemon style. This takes its name from the family of decorators reputed to have introduced the techniques of overglaze enamelling to Arita in western Japan in the 1640s. Kakiemon-style wares were the costliest and most sought after of all Japanese export ceramics. They were widely copied by 18th-century European manufacturers.
Place
Kakiemon-style wares were transported by sea from Imari, the port nearest to Arita. Porcelains for export were sent to Deshima, a small island in Nagasaki harbour, for shipment abroad by Dutch and Chinese merchants.
Time
From 1639 until the mid-1850s, merchants of the Dutch East India Company were the only Europeans permitted to conduct trade in Japan. This was due to the Japanese government's seclusion policy, which was enforced during this period. Hard-paste porcelain comparable in quality to Chinese and Japanese imports was first made at Meissen in Germany in the early years of the 18th century. Porcelain was made in Britain from the late 1740s onwards.
