Imari Blue and White Dish with Gourds, Edo Period
Some museum records are long and detailed. The Tokyo National Museum record for this Imari blue-and-white dish is short: it gives the title, the ware, the date and the size, and little else. This post keeps to those facts and to what the photograph shows.
Dish with Gourd Design in Underglaze Blue
The museum gives no English title for this dish, so the name above is our rendering of the Japanese one. The title tells us two things: the decoration is 染付 (sometsuke, underglaze blue), and the motif is 瓢箪 (hyōtan, the gourd).
The dish is Imari ware from the 19th century, during the Edo period. The record names no kiln.
It measures 28.5 cm across and 4.9 cm high, with a base 16.5 cm in diameter. The museum classifies it as tableware. It was donated by Hirano Kōsuke (平野耕輔, 1871–1947), a ceramics scientist.
The Gourd Pattern on This Imari Dish
A broad blue band sweeps across the face of the dish. It curves out from the centre in three arms, which divide the surface into three sections.
In each section, gourds hang among vines and clusters of leaves, painted in darker blue against the white ground.
How the Pattern Fills the Circle
The design has no single focal point. Instead, the three arms of the band carry the eye around the dish, and the gourds and leaves fill the spaces between them right up to the edge.
Because the band divides the circle into three similar parts, the dish looks balanced from any angle. Try following one arm of the band from the centre out to the rim, then on to the next group of gourds.
Gourds on an Imari Blue-and-White Dish
The museum record for this dish is brief: an Imari dish from the 19th century, painted in underglaze blue with a gourd design, 28.5 cm across. The photograph adds the rest. A single sweeping band and three groups of gourds fill the whole surface, and the pattern is easiest to appreciate when you take your time over it.
If you prefer your tableware plainer than this, with muted glazes and the marks of the kiln left showing, our Etsy shop has the wabi-sabi pieces we bring to everyday tables.
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