'Perfectly imperfect' Kosometsuke porcelain wares

This group of kosometsuke porcelain works, created for the Japanese market, represent a fascinating but relatively brief period in the design of Chinese export ceramics.

Kosometsuke porcelain — sometimes known as Tianqi porcelain (or tenkei in Japan) — was produced in Jingdezhen, China, during the Tianqi period of the Ming Dynasty (1621–28). Created entirely to suit Japanese tastes, the blue-and-white wares embraced wabi-sabi aesthetics and were intentionally made using poorly levigated clay and rough potting methods that would create sought-after imperfections. In particular, kosometsuke wares often met the specific utensil requirements of tea ceremonies, which were gaining popularity at the time.

This group includes 11 kosometsuke mukozuke (side dishes), a larger serving dish and a mizusashi (water jar). Also included is a refined shonsui porcelain piece, also made at the Jingdezhen kilns, manufactured after the Tianqi period for Japanese tea masters.

The mukozuke (literally meaning ‘set to the side’) is a side dish essential to the kaiseki, a multi-course meal that precedes the formal tea ceremony. The mukozuke of this group, though thickly moulded, are often finely decorated with images from nature or symbolic scenes from Zen Buddhism. One dish, formed in the shape of a stylised cloud, is decorated with a scene of a boy with an ox, referring to the Jūgyūzu (Ten Verses on Ox-Herding or Ten Ox-Herding Pictures). Derived from the original poem by twelfth-century Chan (Zen) master Kuoan Shiyuan, the verses represent the ten stages of the quest for enlightenment. Others are illustrated with scenes from nature: farm animals at rest, a butterfly, pomegranates and landscape designs. The dishes are usually raised on three or four feet, with the design often extending in relief to the underside.

A matching set of five mukozuke take the form of origata (folded paper shapes); their particular knotted shape reflects a form of paper-folding used for love letters during the Edo period (1603–1868). In another expression of wabi-sabi design, one dish from this set also features kintsugi repair, where a crack is conspicuously mended with lacquer mixed with powdered gold.

This group of works also includes a larger, rounded kosometsuke dish, decorated with characterful duelling cockerels, and a kosometsuke mizusashi (water jar) thickly potted in the form of a sakinbukuro, a leather pouch used in medieval Japan for carrying gold dust. Together with its illustration of flying cranes, representing longevity, the sakinbukuro shape symbolises good fortune.

The group is rounded out with a final mukozuke, also made at the Jingdezhen kilns, but in the refined shonsui (or shonzui) style commissioned by Japanese tea masters after the Tianqi period. Manufactured in the Chongzhen period (1627–44), the dish is potted in the shape of an artemisia (mugwort) leaf and decorated with the ‘three friends of winter’, an art motif comprising the pine, bamboo and Chinese plum, and hanakarakusa (scrolling flowers).

Viewed together, these wares speak to an energetic period of cultural exchange between China and Japan, during which Chinese ceramicists adapted traditional techniques to embrace ‘perfectly imperfect’ Japanese design philosophies.