A Set of Five Japanese Blue and White Porcelain Stencilled and Painted Dishes For Sweetfish

A Set of Five Japanese Blue and White Stencilled Porcelain Dishes, Arita Kilns c.1690-1720. Decorated with an extensive watery landscape, dotted with islands, rocks and to the lower middle a small boat. This set of five mould made rectangular porcelain dishes are thickly potted with indented corners, they are supported by a sturdy foot that reflects the shape of the dish. Dishes of this type are called nagazara, perhaps unsurprisingly it means long dishes. They were used for sweetfish, in other words freshwater fish. In effect, these dishes are made in a very modern way, predating techniques used in the Industrial Revolution in Britain. The decoration is stencilled, the effect is a little crude, it was used before the Doccia used it briefly in the mid-18th century. So the dish was mould made, biscuit fired, then stencilled in a technique, called Konnyaku. It was then quickly painted to give tonal value to the scene. Stencilling can be identified by the broken lines, as continuous lines would weaken the stencil. The stencil consisted of fairly thick, slightly extensible, rather rubbery sheets, which were made from polymerised persimmon juice, it was reinforced with criss-cross mulberry bark fibres. The technique went out of fashion in about 1720 but was revived in the late 19th century, it was used for large blue and white dishes that were exported to Europe and America. Konnyaku was first mentioned in 1988 by Faulkner, Irene Finch (1918 – 2019) wrote about it later, donating pieces of Konnyaku and many other pieces of Japanese porcelain to museums across Britain.

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