A Japanese Barber’s Bowl, Arita kilns, Edo period, circa 1700-20
Made for export to Europe, this Japanese porcelain barber’s bowl is decorated in the Imari palette of underglaze blue, iron-red enamel and gilt. The central well is decorated with a vase containing a large bouquet of flowers including peonies and chrysanthemums. The wide rim is decorated with three cartouches containing a zig-zag fence and trailing flowers. These cartouches are reserved on an underglaze blue border painted with gilt and red peonies and trailing foliage. The underside is decorated with two flowering prunus branches.
Barber surgeons of the period offered grooming services and basic surgical procedures. As such, the bowl could have been used for shaving as well as bloodletting.
Condition: Minor wear to the gilt and iron-red decoration in places, including the rim, although the area for the neck is largely unworn. The two suspension holes are glazed and from manufacture. There is a spur mark to the base. No damage or restoration, just typical minor manufacturing anomalies. There is a small slither from the rim which occurred during potting, when the clay was in a leather-hard state prior to being glazed. There is also a minute firing flaw to the underside, where a short faint line leads from a speck of kiln dust into the glaze.
Dimensions: Diameter 26.5 cm; Highest point on the rim 6.5 cm
Japanese Porcelain, Soame Jenyns (Faber & Faber, 1965).
Porcelain for Palaces: The Fashion for Japan in Europe, 1650-1750, John Ayers, Oliver Impey, J.V.G. Mallet (Oriental Ceramic Society, 1990).