Among these are a Japanese porcelain vase and cover decorated in the
Kakiemon style (c.
David Baker Oriental Art offers a rare Japanese
Kakiemon vase from the Arita kilns of around 1660, decorated in polychrome enamels with a pair of exotic birds in fruiting branches, alongside other early Japanese porcelains.
Sakaida
Kakiemon I (1596-1666) mastered the techniques of overglaze enamel painting in Arita.
Currently, she is looking at
Kakiemon and Imari import ware from the late 1600s and the resulting soft- and hard-paste porcelain European imitations by Burgley House (1688), Hampton Court (1696) and Meissen (1730).
It was the Dutch who encouraged the Japanese to develop a decorative style based on brocade patterns, using mainly a palette of underglaze blue combined with overglaze iron red and gold, rather than the simpler blue and white or
kakiemon porcelains that the Japanese themselves preferred.
The others are Nakasaburo Shinnai, 60, a puppet theater samisen player in Tokyo, Minori Yoshita, 68, a gold leaf craftsman in Komatsu, Ishikawa Prefecture, Kuroemon Katayama, 70, a leading Noh actor in Kyoto, Shoin Yamase, 68, a koto player in Tokyo,
Kakiemon Sakaida, 66, a porcelain maker in Arita, Saga Prefecture, and Kiyotsugu Nakagawa 58, a woodcraft artist in Kyoto.
Within decades of this discovery,
Kakiemon Sakaida began creating porcelain with red, green and yellow designs.
Included in the collection of 20,000 pieces are porcelain wares from the Ming Dynasty in China and Imari and
Kakiemon wares from Japan.
Mantlepieces and shelves of royal palaces and aristocratic stately homes were adorned with Japanese porcelains: blue-and-white wares,
Kakiemon, Imari and other designs.
This is because it's actually copying another style of Japanese porcelain known as
Kakiemon, a style which, like
Of the 21 artists in this exhibition, four are deceased, including Sakaida
Kakiemon XIV, born in 1934, who has been designated a Living National Treasure; Fukumoto Fuku (b 1973) together with Kitamura Junko (b 1956), are the only females and Wada Akira (b 1978) is the youngest at 35.
Of wonderful quality and in great condition, these '
Kakiemon' vases doubled their estimate to sell for the top price of 102,000 [pounds sterling].