Description

This fine vase shows the Japanese potters ability to adopt popular Chinese Transitional period shapes and to respond to the Dutch export demand for extremely busy decoration. Contrary to the traditional Japanese restraint and ‘less is more’ style of decoration for the home market, the lucrative Dutch export business enjoyed crammed views and billowing landscapes. Usually peopled with tight groups of distinctively painted figures, barely a space is undecorated. This horror vacui was successfully copied by the Delft potters to such an extent that from a distance, the Dutch and Japanese ceramics can be quite difficult to tell apart. See Delft ewer #9687 in our collection.

The trade in Japanese porcelain for European export, initially through the Portuguese traders and after about 1650 by the Dutch companies is a fascinating and rewarding subject. The turbulent polictical situation in China between the end of the Ming and beginning of the Ching dynasties made business transactions unfeasible and forced the Dutch to change their main suppliers of Asian goods (porcelain, lacquer, silks etc) from China to Japan. This period between 1650 and 1680 is responsible for much of the most interesting blue and white Arita porcelain which arrived in Holland and was distributed throughout Europe.

Many of the finest pieces remain in Holland of course, though there was considerable interest from English and French collectors of the late 17th century with much now on display in Museums ( Rijksmuseum, Princessehof Leewarden and in the UK at the V and A, Ashmolean British Museum) In England, the private collections reveal the taste of the original collectors such as at Burghley House, Ham House and Kensington Palace which have remained largely untouched since their original purchase.

A pair of identical vases from the collection of Herman Daendels and exhibited fig 71, Japanese porcelain to the Dutch order, 1981 at the Princessehof Museum, Leeuwarden