Eastern Art Online, Yousef Jameel Centre for Islamic and Asian Art

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Japanese Decorative Arts of the Meiji Period

A catalogue of the Ashmolean’s Japanese decorative arts from the Meiji period (1868-1912), by Oliver Impey and Joyce Seaman (published Oxford, 2005).

Japanese Decorative Arts of the Meiji Period 1868-1912 by Oliver Impey and Joyce Seaman

Publications online: 54 objects

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Tray with cockerel, hen, and chick

  • Literature notes

    A while cockerel and hen with a dark mottled chick stand against a pale blue ground, within a foliate border. The reverse woth different coloured shapes of a snowflake, cherry blossom and crescent moon on a turquoise ground. The tray unsigned; the image signed: Seitei with kakihan.

    The wire is used here as emphasis; is makes part of the picture, but Sōsuke could well have dispensed with it if he had wished to; the wire is vital to the composition. Later he was to devise pictorial patterns where the wire is almost all invisible. In the Third National Industrial Exposition in 1890 he exhibited a pair of wooden screens with inset shippō panels imitating the work of a series of famous painters from the tenth to the nineteenth centuries, at least one of which had no visible wire.
  • Details

    Associated place
    Asia Japan (place of creation)
    Date
    1885 - 1890
    Meiji Period (1868 - 1912)
    Artist/maker
    attributed to Namikawa Sōsuke (1847 - 1910) (designer)
    after Watanabe Seitei (1851 - 1918) (designer)
    Material and technique
    copper, inlaid with silver wire cloisonné enamel
    Dimensions
    29.2 x 29.2 x 2 cm (height x width x depth)
    Material index
    Technique index
    Object type index
    No. of items
    1
    Credit line
    Purchased with the assistance of the Story Fund, 1994.
    Accession no.
    EA1994.35
  • Further reading

    Katz, Janice, Japanese Paintings in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, with an introductory essay by Oliver Impey (Oxford: Ashmolean Museum, 2003), p. 195

    Impey, Oliver, and Joyce Seaman, Japanese Decorative Arts of the Meiji Period 1868-1912, Ashmolean Handbooks (Oxford: Ashmolean Museum, 2005), no. 46 on p. 96, pp. 7, 62, & 92, illus. p. 97

Glossary

cloisonné

  • cloisonné

    Decorative technique in which wires are attached to a metal body and coloured enamels are applied between the wires.

Location

    • currently in research collection

Objects are sometimes moved to a different location. Our object location data is usually updated on a monthly basis. Contact the Jameel Study Centre if you are planning to visit the museum to see a particular object on display, or would like to arrange an appointment to see an object in our reserve collections.

 

Publications online

  • Japanese Decorative Arts of the Meiji Period 1868-1912 by Oliver Impey and Joyce Seaman

    Japanese Decorative Arts of the Meiji Period

    A while cockerel and hen with a dark mottled chick stand against a pale blue ground, within a foliate border. The reverse woth different coloured shapes of a snowflake, cherry blossom and crescent moon on a turquoise ground. The tray unsigned; the image signed: Seitei with kakihan.

    The wire is used here as emphasis; is makes part of the picture, but Sōsuke could well have dispensed with it if he had wished to; the wire is vital to the composition. Later he was to devise pictorial patterns where the wire is almost all invisible. In the Third National Industrial Exposition in 1890 he exhibited a pair of wooden screens with inset shippō panels imitating the work of a series of famous painters from the tenth to the nineteenth centuries, at least one of which had no visible wire.
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