The dazzling white ground of this dish is a fine example of the milky-white nigoshide body achieved by the Kakiemon and surrounding kilns in Arita. This brilliance was a marked improvement on the grey, semi-opaque tinge of the earliest porcelain made on Kyūshū. An asymmetrical design of a peafowl and a plum blossom tree in bright enamels emphasises the whiteness. On the rim, barely visible, is a design called the ‘Three Friends of Winter’ (shō-chiku-bai), delicately moulded in six cartouches. The three plants – pine, bamboo and plum blossom – are symbols of longevity and fortitude, for pine and bamboo remain green all year round, while the plum blossom is the first to flower in the New Year. The combination has been an auspicious motif in Chinese art since the Song period (960 –1279) and was subsequently adopted in early Japanese visual culture.

The base of the dish bears the traces of firing spurs – small feet of clay used to support the dish during firing and broken off afterwards. The dish is one of a set of five that were displayed with other Chinese and Japanese porcelain in the North Corridor at Windsor Castle in 1927, alongside Meissen pieces in the Kakiemon style.

Text adapted from Japan: Courts and Culture (2020)

Saucer-shaped dishes, with everted wavy rim, round which are six moulded cartouches with pine, bamboo and prunus and birds. Painted in the centre is a yellow-breasted peafowl on a green and yellow rock, by a branch of prunus with red and yellow blooms; and on the base, the marks of firing spurs.

Text adapted from Chinese and Japanese Works of Art in the Collection of Her Majesty The Queen: Volume II.