An exceptionally early Arita Ko-Kutani moulded porcelain dish in the form of a Peach with leaves and stem, painted in the Chinese Shonzui style with underglaze cobalt blue with a naturalistic sprig of flowering cherry blossoms picked out in iron-red and dark-green enamels, flowering peonies in iron-red, three floral roundels and stylized clouds
 
Arita kiln, Early Enamelled ware, Ko Kutani type or an early enamellers workshop, Hizen province, Japan
early Edo period, circa 1640s
 
MEASUREMENTS
16.7 cm long x 14.3 cm wide
 
CONDITION
In excellent original condition with very minor wear to the early enamels.
 
This very finely moulded dish in the form of a ripe peach with moulded stem and leaves belongs to the earliest examples of overglaze enamels produced in Japan. Dating within the latter half of the 1640s, the early Arita potters embarked on a rapid period of technical innovation in order to replicate the coveted wucai coloured porcelains from China. The use of underglaze cobalt blue on porcelaneous wares was introduced in the 1610s in Japan by Korean potters. The successful firing of iron-red in the 1640s was foundational in the development of overglaze colours, followed by a polychrome palette including green, blue, yellow and puce. This early peach-shaped dish showcases the rapid innovations made with early overglaze pigments fired in low-temperature muffle kilns on the coarse greyish porcelaneous body of early Arita wares. The dish successfully combines a Chinese-inspired sancai (three-color) palette that includes underglaze blue (sometsuke) with overglaze iron-red and green enamels. Initially, the bisque clay was painted with cobalt blue pigment and glazed before being fired in a high-temperature kiln. After painting coloured pigments over the cooled and hardened glaze, the dish was then re-fired in a lower temperature muffle kiln to fuse the overglaze pigments to the surface.
The establishment of overglaze pigments on Japanese porcelain is documented by historical records known as 'The Record of the Beginning of Red Porcelain' held in the Kakiemon family which states that "Kisaburo Kakiemon (the first Kakiemon) sold red porcelain to the shopper of Lord Chikuzen of Kaga in Nagasaki for the first time in June of the year the galleon arrived. 'Galleon' refers to a galleon ship, and it was in the fourth year of Shoho (1647), when a Portuguese galleon, which was forbidden from entering Nagasaki, arrived and caused a commotion, that he sold his first polychrome porcelain to the shopper of Maeda Mitsutaka, the third lord of the Kaga domain and the governor of Chikuzen. This means that by the fourth year of Shoho, he had already perfected polychrome porcelain of a quality high enough to sell to a daimyo family." 
This dish offers both a truly delightful form and a window into the early history of Japan's porcelain industry which - in the latter half of the 17th century - dominated the world.
 
STORAGE
With a traditional Japanese paulownia wood tomobako storage box with an inscribed traditional rice paper cover and silk ribbon.