Kutani Porcelain

One of my passions is to look at old, very old, Japanese porcelain. I love going to exhibitions to see these masterpieces of Art. The three distinct styles that I mostly admire are Satsuma, Imari and Kutani.

I will write about Satsuma and Imari porcelain at another time; here and now I wish to concentrate on the Kutani style. I have many books about Kutani porcelain. One doesn't have to be a collector (most of us could not afford collecting genuine Japanese antiques anyway), but everyone has the opportunity to enjoy them in books, museums, videos and countless on-line sources of information.

Kutani means nine valleys and it refers to a village. The name "Kutani" is used as a name of pottery and porcelain made at this location, with a variety of small manufacturers rather than just one artist or workshop. It is important to know that Kutani porcelain was made in Japan after the mid-17th century (after 1655). The year of 1655 coincides with the first year of the Myoreki period in Japan. Stones suitable for porcelain making was found in the Kutani mine of the Daishoji Clan, whereupon Lord Maeda Toshiharu sent Goto Saijiro to the Arita Village in the Hizen province to learn how to make porcelain. Kutani Porcelains from this early period are known as Ko-Kutani, and are extremely rare! The production of Ko-Kutani items continued for 50-60 years.

Around 1800 the Kutani kilns were restored in Kasugayama, Kanazawa City to make porcelain ware for everyday use. After just a few years of operation, this kiln was destroyed by a huge fire. Around 1806-1820 Honda Sadakichi built new kilns in Wakasugi with the purpose of reviving the old style. In 1823-1831 Yoshidaya Kilns were built in Daishoji at the site of Ko-Kutani to concentrate on commercial porcelain with printed designs.

From the mid-1800s (19th century), a number of skilled Kutani Artists with distinct styles emerged, among them Kutani Shoza (1816-1883), working with gaudy enamels and gold brocade patterns as seen on the picture.

During the Meiji period (1868 - 1912) around 70 percent of the production in the above Shoza style was exported. Today, this number increased to around 80 percent. Most of the Kutani porcelain we see
today is thus Shoza style, Yoshida Kiln export ware, dating from early 19th century up until today. Less educated wanna-be conoissuers-des-Arts often use the term Kutani to refer to just the later, colorful pieces decorated with red, gold, white and black pictures of warriors, animals, geishas, and birds but which have almost no value from the point of view of the antique-collector.

My favorite is the orange / gold variation early 19th century style, as shown on the opening picture. Let's say you would walk around in your local flea market or a garage sale and all of a sudden this beautiful thing is staring at you (no, I am not talking about the lady of the house). There is this bowl or a vase or a plate that looks similar to the picture in this blog. How do you know if the piece in question is valuable?

First of all, if there is Kutani or Made in Japan written on the bottom of the piece, you can be sure it is a 20th century factory made product made to imitate the style, worthless unless you like to store some pencils in it. That is not a valuable antique at all.

Almost all authentic and old Kutani items have a genuine Kutani brush-stroke mark underglaze (or above glaze, incised or impressed), which consists of two Japanese calligraphic words or Kanji [Kanji are ideograms, i.e. each character has its own meaning and corresponds to a word], the first one is shaped like an h and the one below is shaped like a house or pagoda with the roof being pitched. The first one means from the workshop of, and the second that is house shaped means the place / geographic area, which is here Kutani. Sometimes, as we can see with this Satsuma porcelain, the master Artist signed a piece and then added the Kanjis of his / her name and place of residence. To make authentication rather difficult, some of the extremely valuable pieces have ABSOLUTELY NO MARKS at all.