Tea bowl

The Englishman James Lord Bowes (1834-1899), who once owned this bowl, began collecting Japanese ceramics at the 1867 Paris Exposition. This piece was an anomaly in his collection, which tended toward elaborate enamel-decorated export wares from Satsuma, Kutani, and Kyoto. Its simplicity and crackled, greenish-brown glaze were, however, very much in keeping with Freer's taste. In 1908, Freer displayed it with an array of similar tea bowls on the mantel beneath Whistler's painting La Princesse du pays de la porcelaine.