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

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

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Satsuma style vase depicting a bird perched on a cherry tree

Glossary

earthenware

  • earthenware

    Ceramic material made of clay which is fired to a temperature of c.1000-1200⁰c. The resulting ceramic is non-vitreous and varies in colour from dark red to yellow.

Location

    • Second floor | Room 36 | Japan

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.

 

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Publications online

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

    Japanese Decorative Arts of the Meiji Period

    Earthenware vase decorated with a bird perched on a flowering cherry tree, watching a spider descending on a thread among autumn leaves. Signed on the base with the seal mark: Yabu Meizan.

    Yabu Meizan (1853-1934) was a decorator, not a potter; the ceramic body was bought in as a blank, probably from Kagoshima. His factory in Ōsaka produced Satsuma-style overglaze-decorated pieces, specializing in the minute depiction of large numbers of figures in processions. For this, he used copper templates many of which have survived, though their use is extremely difficult to detect. At the Japan-British Exhibition at Shepherd’s Bush in 1910, he exhibited pieces both in his old style and in a new, much more open style, such as that of the vase here, While the critics praised the new style (‘contemporary’), the public preferred the old style even though it was very expensive.

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