Pair of mounted bowls, one with cover porcelain: 1690-1800, mounts: 1780-1800
Porcelain painted in underglaze blue, red and gilt enamels, mounted in gilt bronze | 63.5 x 31.5 x 31.0 cm (largest of members) | RCIN 28790
-
The scenes on this bowl and cover incorporate elements of the Edo-period woodblock genre, ukiyo-e (‘pictures of the floating world’). This predominantly urban art form depicted pleasurable activity as the best response to life’s transience, as townspeople (chōnin) ‘floated’ with the moment by embracing music, food, drink and sexual fulfilment. Fashionable young ladies from the licensed pleasure quarters embodied this philosophy. Here, beautiful women are painted wearing flowing kimono and holding floral blooms. Dogs play at their feet, and they pull handcarts with vases overflowing with peonies, plum blossom and chrysanthemums. Such scenes provided idealised images of a world of carefree indulgence inaccessible to all but the wealthiest classes.
The motifs of elegance and luxury translate well onto porcelain because of the brilliance of the underglaze blue, red enamel and gold. French gilt bronze mounts, added in the late eighteenth century, almost double the height of the object. In 1829, this bowl was probably displayed with its pair in the Music Room Gallery at the Royal Pavilion, Brighton – a residence which itself was associated with pleasurable excess thanks to the extravagance of the Prince Regent (later George IV) there.
Pair of bowls, one with cover, mounted in gilt bronze. With a deep, circular bowl, painted round the sides with ladies wearing traditional Japanese dress, holding floral blooms, with dogs, and pulling handcarts carrying vases of peony, prunus and chrysanthemum blooms; on a raised foot. The cover to match (RCIN 28790.2), with acanthus bud finial and circular dished plate holding the bowl, with foliate and pierced moulding underneath and with large bulb below, supported by three loops, joined by three curved straps, the supports terminating in foliate paw feet, resting on a deep circular plinth with flaming finial above three recessed panels filled with foliage, the plinth with projecting points below each foot with applied lozenge.
Text adapted from Chinese and Japanese Works of Art in the Collection of Her Majesty The Queen: Volume II and Japan: Courts and Culture (2020)Provenance
Almost certainly acquired by George IV. Probably the pair in the Music Room Gallery at the Royal Pavilion, Brighton, inventoried as ‘A pair of Japan China Potpourri Bowls & Covers with Figures, flowers &c on a white ground mounted with broad pierced ormolu borders, ring handles high circular leaf tops & Knobs, on tripod foliage paw bases with blaze in the centre, circular plinths panell’d in flowers, two feet three inches [68.6 cm] (one cover in stores the others broken)’ (1829B, p. 29); sent to Buckingham Palace in 1847 (1829A, p. 27), and in 1921, noted there in the Bow Room (1829B, p. 29).
-
Creator(s)
(nationality)(metalworker)Acquirer(s)
-
Medium and techniques
Porcelain painted in underglaze blue, red and gilt enamels, mounted in gilt bronze
Measurements
63.5 x 31.5 x 31.0 cm (largest of members)
Category
Other number(s)
Place of Production
Arita [Saga, Japan]
