An exceptionally rare and important early Ninsei type Ko-Kutani 古九谷仁清手 double-gourd tokkuri (sake bottle), gracefully decorated with The Flowers of Autumn, kiku (chrysanthemum), fujibakawa (mistflower), kikyo (balloon flower), nadeshiko (dianthus pinks), and susuki (grasses)
Early overglaze enamelled ware with gilding, Ko-Kutani Nonomura Ninsei type 古九谷仁清手, Arita or Kaga kiln, Japan
Edo period (mid 17th century)circa 1655
Description
The brilliantly potted double-gourd form conjoined by a central collar elegantly enamelled in green and gold, the upper section modelled as a tapered pear form with delicately flaring mouth and decorated in overglaze blue, green and gold with scattered florets amongst scrolling vines, above a white porcelain ovoid body, superbly decorated with sprays of chrysanthemums, mistflowers, balloon flowers, dianthus pinks, and grasses in green, blue, and puce overglaze enamels, iron-red elements and lavish gold highlights throughout. The shoulder of the lower body section finely embossed with a patterned collar left in the white. The heavily potted base lacking footrim, with flat pad and central indented medallion entirely covered in deep blue enamel wash in the early ko-Kutani style.
Notably, the enamels and decoration lack the typical black outlining seen in the early Arita Kakiemon wares and adopted from the Chinese style of black outlining with coloured enamels. This manner of polychrome enamel decoration without black outlining is known as Ninsei-style and credited to Nonomura Ninsei, said to be the founder of Kyoto enamelled ware.
Though documentation from this early period is scarce, scholars note the close connection between the two forefathers of Japanese overglaze enamelling which rapidly developed in the 1640s, namely Sakaida Kakiemon I and Nonomura Ninsei. Kakiemon established his workshops in the village of Arita, while Ninsei opened Omuro kiln at the gates of Ninna-ji Temple in Kyoto by 1647. Ninsei is the most historically documented Japanese potter of the Edo period and was recognized as a Master Potter by the mid 17th century. Recent studies indicate that Ninsei was likely one of the potters who left Arita with the Nabeshima potters expulsion act of 1637, was active in the Maeda fifedome of Kaga during the early development of ko-Kutani overglaze enamelling and cold gilding techniques adapted from the Jesuits, and ultimately established his own kiln in Kyoto in 1648.
In the mid-1650s century, Ninsei's elegant enamelling style - which was highly regarded and sought after by Japanese nobles - experienced a very brief period of production on the white porcelain clay of Arita and in Kaga. This resulted in a small and unique group of wares showcasing these brilliantly coloured enamels against stark white porcelain - a contrast to Ninsei's Kyoto wares on yellow-tinged pottery.
Called 'Ninsei-te ko-Kutani' ware, this short period of production in mid 17th century Arita coincided with the equally brief production of the coveted 'ruri ginsai ko-Kutani' which featured red, gold and silver decoration on a blue ground and was among the earliest ware shipped from Japan to Europe by the Dutch East India Company. Due to the incredibly brief period of manufacture, these scarce early porcelain Ninsei-style ko-Kutani pieces are very rarely seen outside of major museum collections.
With an antique Japanese paulownia wood storage box and ribbon tie.
Measurements
21.5 cm high
Condition
Elegant kintsuji repair to the upper section of the neck. An original superficial surface firing crack extending from the base upwards towards the belly amongst the chrysanthemum enamelling.
Comparable Examples:
A very closely related pear-shaped sake bottle - almost certainly by the same hand - is illustrated in Otani Bijutsu 'Kakiemon and Ninsei-style', published by Otani Fine Art (Tokyo) 2023, no. 17. This bottle is described as "Old Kutani Ninsei-style thin neck vase with autumn grass bouquet design, from the Shimomura Collection".
Another very closely related koro (incense burner) - almost certainly by the same hand - is illustrated in Otani Bijutsu 'Kakiemon and Ninsei-style', published by Otani Fine Art (Tokyo) 2023, no. 23. This koro is described as "Old Kutani Ninsei-style grape design incense burner".
Another closely related and magnificent pear-shaped sake bottle, with similar enamelled decoration to the neck, in the collection of the Tokyo National Museum with "colouring and designs in the style of Kyoto pottery adorning this white porcelain vase, which is an early example of [Arita] ware with overglaze enamels".
A similar (but likely slightly later; possibly dated to 1664) example of this exceedingly rare Ninsei-style Ko-Kutani gourd shaped bottle in the collection of the Kyushu Ceramic Museum (Saga Prefecture, Japan).
A magnificent early enamelled Ko-Kutani Ninsei-type tokkuri (sake bottle) c1655
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Additional information
According to Yukio Suzuta (Kyushu Ceramic Museum), "Ninsei-te 仁清手 is a technique of painting without black outlines, which is done in the style of Kyoto ware. It is named after Nonomura Ninsei, who is said to be the founder of Kyoto ware color painting.
Arita color painting techniques began with the introduction of technology from China, and were modeled on Chinese colored porcelain, so basically, the pattern is drawn with a black outline, and green or yellow overglaze paint is applied to color it. When painting a pattern such as a red flower, a red outline is dami (surface paint) with red paint. Also, the technique of painting green or yellow within a red outline was popular for a time from the 1640s to 1660s, but disappeared from Arita folk kilns when Nabeshima adopted it.
The expression of only colored surfaces without borders, such as Ninsei-te, began in Kyoto ware in the mid-17th century, and has become a characteristic of Kyoto ware as the basic painting method of Ninsei and Kiyomizu ware color painting. In addition to the lack of black borders, gold outlines are also commonly seen in Kyoto ware. This style of painting is thought to have influenced Arita overglaze porcelain, and Ninsei-te Arita porcelain appeared in the 1650s and early 1660s. This coincided with the period when gold, silver, and red overglaze porcelain on a white porcelain base was in vogue.
The difference between Kyoto overglaze porcelain and Ninsei-te porcelain from Hizen is that the base of Kyo ware is ceramic, while the base of Hizen Ninsei-te is white porcelain. The overglaze looks different on the pale yellow base with crazing and the white porcelain base, with the Kyo ware having a subdued color tone and the Arita ware having a bright color tone....Ninsei-de ware in Arita is not the mainstream of colored ware, but a unique group."
Excerpt from the Saga Prefectural Kyushu Ceramic Museum Newsletter Ceramic Kyushu / No. 43, published 2007.
Recent research illustrates the undeniable links between the early Kakiemon and the Arita Ninsei-style porcelains. A research catalogue published in 2023 by Otani Fine Art (Tokyo) notes that:
"In the mid-17th century, the first colored porcelains exported were intricately colored, an extension of the Ko-Kutani style. In the second half of the 17th century, the focus shifted to elegant Kakiemon-style ware, in which colored painting was left with a large amount of white space left over on a beautiful, opaque milky base known as nigoshide. For Europeans, who were not yet able to produce porcelain, the beautiful, shining white Kakiemon ware displayed on dark late Baroque furniture was truly an object of admiration. Meanwhile, at the same time, works that were reminiscent of Kyoto ware's Ninsei were being produced in Arita. This style, also known as Ko-Kutani Ninsei-de, is elegant and beautiful, with leaf veins painted in white using the mokkotsu technique, and this leaf vein expression was also incorporated into the Kakiemon style. Unlike the Kakiemon style, which changed and developed in response to repeated strong requests and influences from overseas, Ko-Kutani Ninsei-de was mainly intended for domestic use except for a period at the beginning, so there were few changes and the same expression continued for a long time. The early Kakiemon and Ko-Kutani Ninsei-de have many things in common, not only in the way they are painted but also in the materials and elements they are made from."
Excerpt from Otani Bijutsu 'Kakiemon and Ninsei-te', published by Otani Fine Art (Tokyo) October 1, 2023.
XRF ANALYSIS OF NINSEI STYLE
A scientific article published in 2024, titled "The Origin of Ko-Kutani Porcelain: New Discoveries and a Reassessment" by researchers including Riccardo Montanari, Hiroharu Murase, Maria Francesca Alberghina, Salvatore Schiavone and Claudia Pelosi, has revealed ground-breaking discoveries in the stylistic and technical developments by Nonomura Ninsei in the mid 17th century.
The research study concluded that Ninsei was crucial in the technical development of enamelling and gilding techniques on Japanese ceramics adapted from European materials and methods, including the use of imported European smalt for blue and green overglaze enamels, and the European methods of cold gilding which Ninsei mastered in his use of gold leaf on high-fired wares.
Nonomura Ninsei’s groundbreaking innovation of gold paint application on Ceramics was "a decoration technique that would influence Japanese porcelain production for centuries to come. XRF analysis has revealed that gold outlining and detailing were obtained by the cold application of a gold paint/foil to the already high-fired and enameled body. This distinctive innovation introduced by Ninsei has been detected and identified for the first time ever in the present work".
As introduced in the article, "in order to define univocally the dynamics behind this period of Japanese history, the most important and complete Ko-Kutani collection extant in Japan today (Ishikawa Prefectural Museum of Art) was analyzed by portable X-ray fluorescence (pXRF). The scientific investigation was also extended to the very scarce shards excavated at the Kaga kiln site and Nonomura Ninsei’s masterpieces. For the first time ever, the results herein presented clarify the missing points crucial to reaching a definitive conclusion."
"Archaeological excavations at the Noborigama (climbing kiln for high firing) kiln site in Kaga have provided compelling evidence of the presence of the Kyoto master potter Nonomura Ninsei in the Maeda fiefdom in the latter half of the 1640s."
"XRF analysis has enabled, for the first-time-ever, the identification of both the production process of Ko-Kutani porcelains and the timeline by which Ko-Kutani and Ninsei’s wares can be dated on scientific and stylistic grounds. Three main periods, Early, Middle and Late, are characterized by the use of specific glazing and enameling materials.
The potting and glazing techniques in Kaga have proven to be the result of potters settling in the Maeda fiefdom after their expulsion from Arita in 1637, while enameling has proven to be the result of the crucial influence exerted by European technological practices introduced by Jesuit Missionaries in Kaga.
European Smalt played an absolutely key role, as it was uninterruptedly employed as a ready-to-use material for blue enameling since the very inception of Kutani wares, and it consistently accompanied the development of the iconic Proto-Aode and Full Aode styles. In order to best suit such changing decoration styles, glaze recipes underwent a thorough experimentation.
The analytical evidence has revealed that Nonomura Ninsei and the Kaga potters benefitted from the same technological transfer by Jesuit Missionaries as in the Maeda fiefdom, as testified to by the early and efficient use of European Smalt, by the employment of the same Cu-Zn-based green enamel also detected on 17th-century Italian ceramics and paintings and by Ninsei’s innovative application on porcelain of the European cold gilding technique.
The results have also unveiled the inception of the Full Aode style, a groundbreaking novelty that was brought to life by merging European painting practices and enameling on porcelain, thus giving birth to the first “Western-Style Painting on Porcelain” in the Far East, a technique that would also impact Arita porcelain production for the European market from the late 17th century onward."