Barber's bowl
Category
Ceramics
Date
1700 - 1720
Materials
Porcelain, cobalt, enamel, gold
Measurements
280 mm (Diameter)
Place of origin
Arita
Order this imageCollection
Belton House, Lincolnshire
NT 433418
Summary
Pair of barber’s bowls, porcelain, round and with wide, upwardly angled rims, with a curved section of the rim removed, Arita, Hizen Province, Japan, 1700–20, decorated in the Imari palette in underglaze blue and overglaze red enamel and gold with in the centre a vase in a double-lobed gourd shape with scrolling handles containing a tall flower arrangement, and on the rim scrolling foliage interspersed with two vases with flowers.
Full description
Arita dishes decorated with more or less the same pattern, in blue and white and in the Imari palette (but regular large dishes rather than barber’s bowls), are in the Groninger Museum, Groningen, inv. nos. 1982-0005 and 1988-0255, see Ayers, Impey and Mallet 1990. The barber’s bowl, a dish with a segment left out of the rim to fit the head, is a European shape and these bowls were made in Japan (and China) for export to the West. The motif of a vase with a tall flower arrangement was derived from the illustrations in 17th-century Japanese manuals for flower arranging, specifically images of the formal arrangements in the rikka 立花 or ‘standing flower’ style (see Schweizer 2011). The same motif is also seen on the front of Japanese lacquer cabinet NT 437669 at Belton House.
Provenance
Purchased by the National Trust with support from the National Heritage Memorial Fund, 1984.
References
Ayers, Impey and Mallet 1990: John Ayers, Oliver Impey and J.V.G. Mallet, Porcelain for Palaces: The Fashion for Japan in Europe 1650–1750, London, 1990, cat. nos. 46 and 230. Schweizer 2011: Anton Schweizer, ‘Komposite für den Export: Die Dekore der Münchner Münzschränke’, in A. Schweizer, et al., Japanische Lackkünst für Bayerns Fürsten: Die Japanischen Lackmöbel der Staatlichen Münzsammlung München, Munich, 2011, pp. 13–30, at pp. 16–7.