KAMAKURA-NANBOKUCHO PERIOD (14TH CENTURY)

During the 12th century, the Ko-seto or Old Seto kilns, in the vicinity of the modern city of Nagoya, started production of a range of high-quality wares that were deliberately intended as substitutes for imported Chinese ceramics, with increasingly sophisticated glazes and stamped floral designs. Although by no means as refined as their continental prototypes, wares from the 'Six Old Kilns' (there are in fact several more) have long been admired both inside and outside Japan for their vigorous forms and understated decoration, characteristics that are also seen in later wares for the tea ceremony. Although Ko-Seto wares have been excavated throughout Japan, finds are most numerous around Kamakura, then the country's military capital; they were apparently used as household utensils by members of the upper classes who had difficulty obtaining imported Chinese luxury goods.
This bottle is decorated with floral and other designs that were stamped into the ground while the clay was still wet; the vase was then covered with a brown glaze of uneven thickness that came into use during the fourteenth century, a combination of ash and oni-ita, an alluvial deposit of iron oxide-bearing clay. For other examples, see Tokyo National Museum, Nihon no toji (Japanese ceramics) (Tokyo, 1985), cat. nos. 145 and 147, and Christie's New York, 27 April 1994, lot 197, from the estate of Blanchette H. Rockefeller.