Gourd-Shaped Bottle

About 1660-1680

Japan, Saga Prefecture

Porcelain painted with overglaze enamels (Arita ware)

H. 10 3/8 x Diam. 5 3/4 in. (26.4 x 14.6 cm)

Asia Society, New York: Mr. and Mrs. John D. Rockefeller 3rd Collection, 1979.243

The shape of this bottle almost certainly takes after the gourd-shaped ceramics of China. Its main body is decorated with a twisting pine tree and a plum tree -- two popular plant motifs symbolizing longevity and winter -- with floating cloudlike forms filled with basket-weave patterns. During the second half of the 17th century, porcelain produced at kilns in the northern Kyushu village of Arita was enameled not at the kilns themselves but at a separate enamelers' quarter (aka-e-machi) within the town.