Sake bottle with landscape decoration

Sake bottle, flattened gourd-shape.
Clay: dense, gray-white.
Glaze: lustrous grayish-white, minutely crackled. Ten spur marks around perimeter of oval base.
Decoration: in cobalt, under glaze. Kano-style landscape.

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Maker(s)
Artist: Decoration attributed to Kano Tangen (1679-1767)
Historical period(s)
Edo period, 18th century
Medium
Stoneware with cobalt pigment under clear colorless glaze
Style
Satsuma ware, White Satsuma type
Dimensions
H x W x D: 23.2 x 18.7 x 13.5 cm (9 1/8 x 7 3/8 x 5 5/16 in)
Geography
Japan, Kagoshima prefecture, Kagoshima, Hiyamizu kiln
Credit Line
Gift of Charles Lang Freer
Collection
Freer Gallery of Art Collection
Accession Number
F1905.41
On View Location
Freer Gallery 12: The Peacock Room Comes to America
Classification(s)
Ceramic, Vessel
Type

Sake bottle (tokkuri)

Keywords
Edo period (1615 - 1868), Japan, landscape, sake, Satsuma ware, Satsuma ware, White Satsuma type, stoneware, wine
Provenance

To 1905
Thomas E. Waggaman (1839-1906), Washington, DC, to 1905 [1]

From 1905 to 1919
Charles Lang Freer (1854-1919), purchased at the sale of the Waggaman Collection, American Art Association, New York, NY, January 25-February 3, 1905 [2]

From 1920
Freer Gallery of Art, gift of Charles Lang Freer in 1920 [3]

Notes:

[1] See Original Pottery List, L. 1354, Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery Archives. Also see Curatorial Remark 16, Louise Cort, June 17, 2008, in the object record.

[2] See note 1.

[3] The original deed of Charles Lang Freer's gift was signed in 1906. The collection was received in 1920 upon the completion of the Freer Gallery.

Previous Owner(s) and Custodian(s)

Thomas E. Waggaman 1839-1906
Charles Lang Freer 1854-1919
American Art Association (C.L. Freer source) established 1883

Description

Sake bottle, flattened gourd-shape.
Clay: dense, gray-white.
Glaze: lustrous grayish-white, minutely crackled. Ten spur marks around perimeter of oval base.
Decoration: in cobalt, under glaze. Kano-style landscape.

Label

From the early seventeenth century, potters in Satsuma province (modern Kagoshima prefecture) made fine white stoneware ceramics for warrior rulers of the province to use in entertaining and for obligatory gift exchanges. The warriors also commissioned a locally based artist named Tangen, who had trained in a Kano workshop in Edo, to paint delicate landscape designs on the white ceramics, using cobalt blue pigment. This decoration, which conveyed the subtle tonalities of ink paintings, became a trademark of Satsuma ceramics.

Collection Area(s)
Japanese Art
Web Resources
The Story of the Beautiful
Google Cultural Institute
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