Description

Chinese porcelain blue and white cake basket with upright flat sides and strap handle, painted on the interior with four horses amongst grass, the exterior painted with branches of fruiting pomegranates, the upright handle with a flowerhead and scrolling branch.

7 1⁄4 inches, 18.5 cm across.

Tianqi, 1621-1627.

Edo Period Japanese wood box.

Provenance & Additional Information

  • Sold by Ikemasa & Co., Tokyo, 8th February 2014.
  • Included by Christie’s New York in their auction of Fine Chinese Ceramics and Works of Art, 22nd March 2019, lot 1639.
  • Included by Marchant in their exhibition of Kosometsuke & Shonzui, 2024, no. 14, pp. 48/49.
  • A similar cake basket is illustrated by Masahiko Kawahara in Kosometsuke, colour section, no. 85, pp. 108/9; another is illustrated by Senju Sato and Takeshi Mayuyama in Kosometsuke, no. 44, p. 75; another in the Sekido Museum of Art, Adachi City, Tokyo, is illustrated in their catalogue of Kosometsuke, 2017, no. 28, p. 84; another in the Idemitsu Museum of Art, is illustrated in their catalogue of Kosometsuke and Shonzui, The Blue and White Tea Ceramics of Japanese Admiration, 2013, no. 9, p. 21.
  • A larger cake basket painted with figures and fishing boats in a river landscape was included by Marchant in their exhibition of Seventeenth Century Blue and White and Copper-red and Their Predecessors, 1997, no. 26, pp. 34/5 and front cover.
  • A shard discovered at Jingdezhen No. 5 Elementary School kiln site from the Tianqi/Chongzhen strata of a cake basket is illustrated by Huang Qing Hua in Colorful Japan – the Special Exhibition of the Ordered Porcelains at the End of Ming Dynasty from Japan, which relates to discoveries from this period at Jingdezhen, p. 126.

 

Condition

  • natural firing spots
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