By Rafe Calder
Some of the finest porcelain made in Arita was never meant to be sold. That is the oddest fact in the record, and it explains a lot about how the trade worked.
A port name on a plate
Wikipedia defines Imari ware as a brightly coloured style of Arita export porcelain, decorated with underglaze blue and overglaze red, gold and black. The name comes from the port of Imari, in Saga, which served as the trans-shipment point for wares going to the foreign trading outposts at Nagasaki. So a plate called Imari was made in Arita and shipped from somewhere else. The Arita ware article says the export trade ran through the second half of the seventeenth century and the first half of the eighteenth, and that the goods reached the Dutch East India Company’s outpost at Nagasaki. The Imari article puts the first large Dutch order at 1656.
Dates for the end
The sources are loose about when European exports stopped. The Imari article says they ceased in the mid-eighteenth century, around 1740 to 1756, and also says the Dutch company’s trade ended in 1756. The same article says exports resumed in the late nineteenth century, in the Meiji era. We have not seen the Dutch company’s own records. The span is the article’s, and it gives a range rather than a date.
Gold and blue
The Imari article describes the type usually called kinrande in the West as underglaze cobalt blue with overglaze red and gold, made from the mid-seventeenth century until about 1740. It says Kakiemon, produced around 1700 for roughly fifty years, is characterised by crisp lines and bright blue, red and green designs, and calls it Imari’s technical and aesthetic peak. We take that last phrase as one writer’s judgement.
One family, one persimmon
Kakiemon is also a person and a family. Wikipedia says Sakaida Kakiemon, who lived from 1596 to 1666, is credited with discovering enamel decoration on porcelain, and that his lord gave him the name after he perfected a design of twin persimmons, kaki. It describes a milky white body called nigoshide, and a palette of soft red, yellow, blue and turquoise green. It says the palette, the style and very probably the kiln were in place by the 1680s.
The article adds two later facts. Nigoshide production stopped from the early eighteenth century until Sakaida Kakiemon XII and XIII succeeded in reproducing it in 1953. In 1971 the technique was designated an Important Intangible Cultural Property by the Japanese government, and Sakaida Kakiemon XV became head of the family in February 2014. We have not checked these with the kiln or with the government’s cultural-property listing. We are naming the family because the article does, as history, and we are not recommending a kiln.
Copied in Europe
The Imari article says Meissen, Crown Derby, Worcester and Delft imitated Imari and Kakiemon styles. The Kakiemon article says Meissen, Chelsea and Worcester copied the style in the 1750s and lists Chantilly in France as well. The two lists overlap but are not the same. Neither gives a single list we could check against factory records.
The ware that stayed home
Now the part that was not for sale. Wikipedia’s article on Nabeshima ware says it was made under the direct patronage and administration of the Saga Domain, ruled by the Nabeshima clan, in the Edo period, with production centred on Ōkawachiyama in the seventeenth century. It says the pieces were not intended for the general market. They served three purposes: presentation to the Tokugawa shogunate, gifts to other daimyō, and use in the Nabeshima household.
It lists some features. The foot is customarily left without inscription and finished in solid white. The sides of the foot often carry a comb-tooth pattern. The plates have a shape called mokuhai-gata, with a high base when seen from the side. The article says the domain kiln operated until 1871, after the abolition of the domain system, and that the Ōkawachi kiln site was designated a National Historic Site in 2003. The Arita ware article dates Nabeshima production from the late seventeenth century into the nineteenth, with the first half of the eighteenth considered the finest period. Those dates fit together.
A note on the sources
Every date and name in this piece comes from four Wikipedia articles, on Arita ware, Imari ware, Kakiemon and Nabeshima ware. They are consistent with one another on the broad periods and loose on details. None replaces a museum catalogue or a kiln’s own account, and we have flagged where a figure stands on one article alone.
What that means for a buyer
It means the labels are doing a lot of work. Imari, Kakiemon and Nabeshima are three different things. One is an export style named for a port. One is a family’s palette and a body. One is a domain’s gift ware. A modern piece sold under any of the three names should come with an explanation of what the maker means by it.
What we could not find
We could not find a source on how many kilns work in Arita today, on which ones make Nabeshima-style ware, or on whether any are open to visitors for this piece. We did not find export volumes. We are not quoting prices.
What to ask
Ask whether a piece is a reproduction, a revival or a new design. Ask who painted it and who threw it, since the two jobs can be separate. Ask which palette is meant by the name on the label. Ask for care instructions in writing.
We are not naming a workshop. We have not sourced one for this piece.
Roam first. Shop later.
If you make Arita-style porcelain, the process for getting listed is at /sell-with-sephari/