Serving bowl in style of Longquan ware

Object Details

• Artist

  Attributed to Aoki Mokubei 青木木米 (1767-1863)

• Description

  Bowl of deep shape, plain rim.

  Clay: gray porcellanous stoneware.

  Glaze: thick, glossy celadon, transparent, crackled over foot, on trim but none on base.

  Decoration: outside incised floral pattern, thunder pattern at rim; inside six human figures and five inscriptions, impressed.

• Label

  Son of a Kyoto restaurant owner, the young Mokubei studied Chinese classics, painting, calligraphy, and seal-engraving. Among his acquaintances were the most important literati painters of the age. His study of pottery was inspired by reading the Chinese treatise on ceramics, T'ao-Shuo by Chu Yen (1767), and eventually he wrote a Japanese translation of the work. An album also survives in which Mokubei sketched Chinese ceramics that he studied in private Kyoto collections. One sketch shows a celadon bowl of the sort made in Ming China and known to Japanese connoisseurs as "doll type" (ningyo-de) because of the figures and mottoes stamped in the interior. Mokubei's version of the bowl might have served as a cake dish for the Ming form of steeped tea known as sen-cha, popular in literary circles.

• Collection

  Freer Gallery of Art Collection

• Exhibition History

  Kyoto Ceramics (November 9, 1984 to April 25, 1985)

  Japanese Ceramics (April 11, 1978 to January 17, 1980)

• Origin

  Kyoto, Kyoto prefecture, Japan

• Credit Line

  Gift of Charles Lang Freer

• Type

  Vessel

• Restrictions and Rights

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• Related Resources

  collections.si.edu

• Date

  1700s, 1710s, 1720s, 1770s, 1780s, 1790s, 1730s, 1740s, 1750s, 1760s, 1800s, 1810s, 1820s, 1830s, 1610s, 1650s, 1640s, 1630s, 1620s, 1690s, 1840s, 1680s, 1850s, 1670s, 1860s, 1660s

• Name

  Aoki, Mokubei

• Place

  Kyoto, Japan, Kyoto prefecture

• Topic

  Charles Lang Freer collection, Art, Green glaze, Stoneware, Kyoto ware, Edo period, Japan, (1600 - 1868), Japanese Art, Ceramics, Flowers

• Culture

  Japanese

• Object Type

  Vessels (containers)