Vase

Vase

Ryumonji kilns

18th-19th century

Gift of Charles Lang Freer

Matsuki Bunkyo

Stoneware with iron and rice-straw-ash glazes; red lacquer repairs.

Satsuma ware, Ryumonji kilns

HxW: 24.0 x 10.9 cm

F1901.24

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2

161

West

Edo period

Kajiki town

Japan

United States

Boston

Massachusetts

Vase

Vase

Ryumonji kilns

Described by Freer as "rare, but not beautiful," this Satsuma-ware vase was purchased from the Boston-based Japanese dealer Matsuki Bunkyo. Its distinctive "frog skin" glaze, created by applying successive layers of dark and light glazes, was developed at the Genryuin (or Nishi Mochida) kiln, which operated between 1667 and 1746. In the Peacock Room in Detroit, it was displayed alongside a number of other vessels with dark, complex glazes and mottled surfaces.

17th-18th century

Gift of Charles Lang Freer

Matsuki Bunkyo

Stoneware with iron and ash glazes

Satsuma ware, Ryumonji kilns

HxW: 25.4 x 11.3 cm

F1902.216

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2

14

North

Edo period

Kajiki

Japan

United States

Boston

Massachusetts

Sake flask

Sake flask (heishi)

Ryumonji kilns

This Satsuma ware vessel was probably made as a ceremonial sake flask for use in a Shinto shrine, where it would have been part of a matched pair. Describing it for the catalogue to a 1914 exhibition held at the Japan Society in New York, Edward Sylvester Morse, who thought the vase was "ripping," remarked on the "variable purplish brown" glaze overlaid with a "thin mirror-glaze of rich black mingling with one of powdered tea color, these being allowed to run in rills or streamlets of greater or less length down the body." The fine-grained, purplish "iron sand" glaze seems to have been a specialty of Satsuma kilns, but in this case, the glaze effects were in fact the result of more accident and less intent than Morse understood. <p>Freer had described the jar with similar enthusiasm, noting that it was "very fine." In his notes on the design and layout of the museum in Washington, he suggested that it should be exhibited in an individual case. In the Peacock Room in Detroit, however, he placed it on what is now the north wall, just to the left of the <i>La Princesse du pays de la porcelaine</i> and adjacent to a number of other similarly dark, monochromatic vessels from China and Japan.

17th-18th century

Gift of Charles Lang Freer

R. E. Moore

Stoneware with iron glazes

Satsuma ware, Ryumonji kilns

HxWxD: 37.5 x 21.2 x 21.2 cm

F1896.34

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2

13

North

Edo period

Kajiki town

Japan

United States

New York

New York