A Large Pair of 19th Century Imari Vases

A large pair of late 19th century Imari vases and covers, of good scale and generous form, the lids having lion finials and set upon faceted bodies decorated in the traditional manner.

Imari ware, also known as Arita ware, is a Japanese porcelain made at the Arita kilns in the Hizen province. Manufacture is said to date from 1616, a discovery by immigrant Korean craftsman when Kaolin was found. After the discovery, some kilns began to produce revised Korean-style blue and white porcelains, known as Early Imari, or ‘Shoki-Imari’. In the mid-17th century there were also many Chinese refugees in northern Kyushu due to the turmoil in China, and it is said that one of them brought the overglaze enamel colouring technique to Arita. This led to an expansion in export from the Imari port by the Dutch East India trading Company

Though there are many schools of Imari ware, the type usually seen in the West is called kinrande in Japanese, and was produced for export in large quantities from the mid-17th century until the export trade tailed off around 1740. Kinrande has underglaze cobalt blue and overglaze red and gold, and sometimes other colours. The colour combination was not seen in China at that time. Traditional Ming dynasty colour porcelain used dominantly red and green, probably due to scarcity of gold in China, whereas gold was abundant in Japan in those days.

The subject matter of Arita is diverse, ranging from foliage and flowers to people, scenery and abstractions. Some designs such as Kraakware were adopted from China, but most designs were uniquely Japanese owing to the rich Japanese tradition of paintings and costume design. The porcelain has a gritty texture on the base, where it is not covered by glaze.

Having invisible restorations.