One of history’s most famous collectors of porcelain was Augustus the Strong, Elector of Saxony and King of Poland. Calling him a collector is perhaps too charitable: Over the course of his rule from 1694 until his death in 1733, he accumulated 35,789 pieces of porcelain, the largest collection — no, a veritable dragon’s hoard — of porcelain in the West at the time.
Porcelain is so ubiquitous today as to be scarcely worth a second glance, but the king’s self-described ‘la maladie de porcelaine’ was a very real phenomenon in sixteenth and seventeenth-century Europe. The king was not alone in his ‘china-mania.’ In the sixteenth century, Portuguese and the Dutch established commercial trade routes to the Far East and began importing porcelain ware in vast quantities, catering to the insatiable appetite for these wares among the European nobility.
Among these shipments was Japanese porcelain – Imari ware, as it was known, although it is called Arita ware today. Imari ware takes its name from the port from which it was shipped to Nagasaki and the rest of the world, and encompasses a wide range of porcelain that has been produced in Arita (present-day Saga Prefecture) since the late 1610s. The bulk of Imari ware was made for export during its golden age, but it was also sought after on a smaller scale in its home country.
What we know about Imari ware is far from complete, and there remains much contradictory information and scholarly disagreement on the subject. Nevertheless, the story of Imari ware paints a fascinating picture of Japan’s relationship with the wider world during its period of seclusion, offering us a glimpse of how Europe viewed Japan through the type of products that were made for a European market.
A quick primer on Imari ware
As a ceramic tradition spanning centuries, Imari ware encompasses a wide range of styles under the umbrella of porcelain. While these categories are a useful lens through which we can follow the story of Imari, in practice these styles are not always distinct from each other. For clarity and ease of understanding, I have described them as separate categories.
Early Imari, or shoki-Imari, refers to porcelain with cobalt blue underglaze (sometsuke), meaning designs were painted in blue and the piece coated with a transparent glaze prior to firing. This ware was made prior to the export trade that began in the mid-17th century. The decorations were relatively simple, a clear contrast to the more intricate motifs and patterns of later Imari. Polychrome enamelled Arita ware emerged sometime in the 1650s; the first written record of such was in a 1652 tea diary, describing an Imari ‘brocade’ bowl.
Old Kutani, or ko-Kutani, is characterised by a combination of five vivid colours in a single piece — green, blue, purple, yellow, and red — with bold, painterly designs and patterns; in many cases these overglaze enamels cover the entire body of the piece. These were traded almost exclusively within Japan. These days, Kutani is most often associated with Ishikawa Prefecture, but the earliest Kutani ware was produced in Arita, beginning from around the 1650s.
Old Imari, or ko-Imari, is a category encompassing most Imari wares aside from Kakiemon made between the 1680s and the end of the Edo period (1603-1868); there is not much consensus on the precise start year. Old Imari included the early polychrome enamelled wares, five-colour glazes, and late, large, splendid pieces decorated with overglaze gold and silver, particularly Imari kinrande, or ‘brocade Imari.’ Black enamel was often used on outlines, and around the early 1700s, a pink wash made from colloidal gold was often used to supplement the colour palette or tone down the whiteness of the body.
Kakiemon is distinguished by its milky white body, or nigoshide, on which asymmetrical designs were painted in brilliant colours — but never with underglaze blue. It was used for the finest export wares, particularly between 1670 to 1690; eighteenth-century French catalogues describe enamelled Kakiemon as the ‘première qualité coloriée du Japon.’ Art historians point to a visible Kakiemon style as having emerged around the 1670s or late 1680s; in practice, there is sometimes stylistic overlap between Kakiemon and Old Imari styles.
Kenjo-Imari, or “presentation Imari,” refers to porcelain made exclusively for the Nabeshima clan; it is also called Nabeshima ware. It was of the finest quality, with much use of coloured grounds, and formal, almost Baroque patterns. One rarely sees blue-and-white; polychome enamels and celadons were the focus here. While these were not made for an export market, some pieces made their way to Europe via private trade (as opposed to porcelain for commercial resale). The style persisted throughout the 18th and into the 19th century. Curiously, the Germans seemed to have a predilection for kenjo-Imari, more than any other European country.
The early days of porcelain production in Arita
The apocryphal legend of Imari ware’s origins involves one Yi Sam-Pyeong (Li Sanpei), one of the potters abducted during Toyotomi Hideyoshi’s invasion of the Korean peninsula in the late sixteenth century, who supposedly discovered kaolin-rich stone in Izumiyama near Arita and went on to produce porcelain. There is no extant evidence that verifies this; all we really know is that he was a real person. Scholars have not arrived at a firm agreement on when porcelain was first made in Arita. Most suggest that it was sometime during the first two decades of the seventeenth century, some narrowing it down to around 1620.
At any rate, what is certain is that the Korean potters had a tremendous impact on the area’s stoneware industry. They brought with them the knowledge of building noborigama, stepped, chambered climbing kilns built on a slope, which allowed for a more efficient and controlled firing process. The earliest porcelain in Arita reveals stylistic similarities to Korean Yi Dynasty-style pieces, followed by a shift towards late Ming Dynasty-influenced sometsuke porcelain.
Porcelain made in Arita was not in great demand at first, possibly due to a greater preference for stoneware among sixteenth-century tea practitioners as more suitable for tea ceremony. Moreover, it seems to have been regarded as something of a luxury in its earliest days, and made with more care than later, more mass-produced items. Eventually, domestic demand for everyday porcelain items like bowls, dishes, and bottles did increase, and so did the supply of porcelain to meet this demand, both from Arita kilns as well as Chinese imports. By the 1640s, there was a domestic market for sophisticated porcelain ware; mizusashi (water jars) and chaire (tea containers) were even being produced specifically for the tea ceremony.
The next phase in Imari ware’s journey was the production of enamelled ware. A certain Sakaida Kakiemon is said to have learned the techniques for polychrome overglaze painting from a Chinese potter between 1643 and 1647. The technique, referred to as iro-e (coloured painting) or aka-e (red painting), involves painting enamels on a high-fired glazed object, then firing it again at a lower temperature.
The collapse of the Ming Dynasty and the age of export porcelain
China underwent dynastic collapse in the 1640s, completely disrupting porcelain production in Jingdezhen. The Dutch had been trading Chinese porcelain in Southeast Asia and Europe since the 1630s; faced with a sudden dearth of product, they turned to the then-minor export trade of Arita wares. In other words, civil war in China allowed Arita to step up and fill the sudden vacuum in international porcelain trade. The golden age of Imari ware began around 1660 and would last some 85 years, with an eventual decline in and around the 1730s.
The Dutch East India Company began purchasing Japanese porcelain in 1650 or 1653, depending on whose records one consults. Initial orders were modest, a few thousand pieces a year at most. However, the Dutch sent a chest of porcelain samples to Holland in 1657. No doubt these samples were well-received, for they returned to Arita in 1659 with an order of 64,866 pieces. Initially, the Arita kilns did not have the production capacity to meet this demand; it took two years and much reorganisation of the kilns to fulfil the order.
Arita’s porcelain industry thrived, bolstered by the support of the Nabeshima family, rulers of Hizen Province. But unlike most other samurai clans, the Nabeshima lords were not especially interested in tea ceremony. They had opposed the Tokugawa during the battle of Sekigahara, and as such had difficulty finding favour with them; they needed all the money they could get. Porcelain was profitable, and made convenient gifts.
Initial Dutch orders of porcelain were of blue-and-white ware, similar to what they had already been purchasing from the Chinese. However, Arita’s elaborately decorated, coloured enamelled pieces saw great success, particularly the Kakiemon porcelains. By the time Jingdezhen resumed production in the 1670s, a taste for Japanese porcelain had been established among the upper classes in Europe.
While the Arita kilns churned out export ware for Europe, there was a village deep in the mountains of Imari producing the best porcelain in Japan at the time. Okawachi was a steep, secluded valley, which suited the Nabeshima clan’s purposes — ideal for a feudal kiln making wares for their exclusive use, and as gifts for the Imperial Court, the shogun, and other feudal lords. There was only one, closely guarded entrance, to avoid industrial espionage. The kiln was established in 1675, and continued to produce Nabeshima ware until 1871 when the feudal domains were abolished.
Imari ware in Europe and the rise of imitators
The Arita kilns made porcelain wares for a variety of markets and price ranges, which accounts for the diversity of export ware of this time. Vases, bowls, and plates were much in demand, but so were more unusual, “un-Japanese” wares like beer jugs, barbers’ bowls, kendis (a handle-less pouring vessel with a spout), Dutch coffee urns, and wash basins. Such was the fashion for porcelain that every great house in Europe during the late seventeenth century had sets of Imari vases on prominent display on shelves or mantelpieces. After Queen Mary ascended to the throne in 1689, these displays came to occupy entire rooms expressly designed for showcasing one’s porcelain collection. A typical porcelain room would have had shelves, brackets, cabinets galore on which to arrange these precious ware, as well as judicious use of mirrors to magnify the impact of such excess.
Naturally, imitators entered the market. One of the most notable was Meissen, a factory established in 1710 and financed by the porcelain-obsessed Augustus II the Strong — the first to produce European hard-paste porcelain. In 1729, a French businessman named Rodolphe Lemaire secured a contract with Meissen to produce porcelain in the style of “old Japan” — for the Kakiemon pieces were already considered antiques by then — and borrowed some 220 pieces from the King’s collection to be copied at Meissen. The idea, he wrote to Augustus, was that Meissen’s porcelain should surpass and replace Japanese and Chinese imports of the day.
However, it emerged in 1731 that the factory’s Senior Director had been leaking diplomatic secrets to the French, and colluding with Lemaire to obtain Meissen’s manufacturing secrets. The Director was thrown into prison and Lemaire was deported. By this time the Meissen painters and their customers were now fully familiar with Kakiemon (and Imari) patterns. The factory began producing porcelain with Japanese motifs, albeit with little understanding of their meaning or significance; for instance, quails were assumed to be partridges.
By the early 18th century, social conditions in China were stable enough for the porcelain industry to resume production. Seeing the taste for Imari and Kakiemon styles in Europe, Chinese export porcelain began to produce ‘Chinese Imari.’ Imitations of wares across the quality spectrum were produced, from the lower-end red, blue, and gold Imari to the more richly enamelled styles, and it was sometimes difficult for consumers to tell the difference. It is likely that this copying, China’s lower labour costs, and Jingdezhen’s introduction of new types of porcelain ware (famille rose and famille verte), were factors in the decline of Arita’s exports to Europe in the 1740s.
The revival of Imari ware
Meanwhile in Japan, there was a boom in domestic demand for porcelain goods. By the mid-1760s, functional porcelain wares were being produced in quantity for all classes of society; there were now oil lamps, cups, and sake drinking sets. Not only Arita, but also other ceramic centres like Tobe, Izushi, Seto, and more were making porcelain wares. Around the same time, the highly decorative kinrande (brocade) style emerged, in keeping with the trend for ornament in other crafts such as textiles. So great was demand that the Nabeshima clan were compelled to allow an expansion of production in 1770. This led to an eventual deterioration in the quality of Arita wares for some time, but with no discernible impact on demand.
At the time Japan was forced to open its borders for trade in 1854, Arita’s porcelain industry was flourishing, having recovered from a major fire in 1828 that had destabilised its workshops for several decades. Of particular note during this time period are the large sometsuke “map” plates of around 50-80 cm in diameter, used as serving platters at festive gatherings, and frequently exported to the West. Another sign of the times was the depiction of foreign ships and their crews on porcelain wares.
Shortly after coming into power, the Meiji government invited Western engineers and scientists to Japan, importing foreign technologies to industrialise and improve the country’s infrastructure. Among these experts was the German chemist Gottfried Wagner, who introduced new firing techniques and overglaze colours to Arita in 1870 in a bid to modernise porcelain production.
The government also participated in the World’s Fairs in Paris (1867), San Francisco (1871), and Vienna (1873). Japanese ceramics were well-received, prompting the government to encourage the production of Arita ware and other styles of ceramics. Imari export ware enjoyed a renaissance of sorts in the late 19th century, fuelled by the wave of Japonisme among Western European artists.
Imari ware in the modern age
Imari ware is still produced today in Arita, although it is more commonly referred to these days as Arita ware. Around a third of the porcelain produced there is industrial porcelain, and the remainder tableware and high-quality decorative pieces spanning all the styles described above — blue-and-white, ko-Imari, celadons, and so forth. Potters continue to find innovative ways of incorporating porcelain into modern everyday objects, such as these enamelled porcelain staplers.
Happily, the Ichikawa family in Okawachi and the Imaizumi family in Arita — descendants of the Nabeshima and Kakiemon workshops — continue to keep the old styles alive. The secret kilns of Okawachi became private enterprises, and there are now around 30 workshops there. Similar to other ceramic traditions, there are also more artist-potters producing hand-crafted wares than ever in the Arita region.
Thanks to centuries of trade, Imari ware turns up all around the world — in museums, but also in thrift shops, antique shops, flea markets, perhaps even tucked away in the family attic. But there’s nothing quite like seeing the real deal in the town where it all began.
A fine place to start is the Kyushu Ceramic Museum in Arita; out of its vast collection of exquisite Edo-period porcelain, around 1,000 pieces are on display at any given time. The Arita Ceramics Fair takes place twice a year, drawing over a million visitors each time. The Arita Porcelain Park, with its full-size recreation of a sprawling German baroque palace, offers us a look at the impact of Arita porcelain on European art and design. Even the torii gate of Sueyama Shrine is constructed from porcelain. Arita’s legacy is in plain sight everywhere you look, a reminder of those passionate porcelain collectors from centuries ago, and of these traditions that remain alive today.
Written by Florentyna Leow
Sources and further reading
Ayers, John., Impey, Oliver R.., Mallet, J. V. G.. Porcelain for Palaces: The Fashion for Japan in Europe, 1650-1750. United Kingdom: Oriental Ceramic Society, 1990.
Crueger, Anneliese., Crueger, Wulf., Ito, Saeko. Modern Japanese Ceramics: Pathways of Innovation & Tradition. New York: Lark Books, 2007.
de Waal, Edmund. The White Road: Journey Into an Obsession. United States: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015.
Ford, Barbara Brennan., Impey, Oliver R.. Japanese Art from the Gerry Collection in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1989.
Emerson, Julie., Chen, Jennifer., Gates, Mimi Gardner. Porcelain Stories: From China to Europe. Seattle: Seattle Art Museum, 2000.
Impey, Oliver R.. The early porcelain kilns of Japan: Arita in the first half of the seventeenth century. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996.
Nagatake, Takeshi. Classic Japanese Porcelain: Imari and Kakiemon. Japan: Kodansha International, 2003.