Japanese Art 13


sources. Japan also made an impact on the


European market for porcelain. Te Portuguese and Spanish, English and Dutch had been importing porcelain from China – like lacquer, porcelain could not be replicated in Europe and was regarded as a wondrous material. As China was invaded by the Manchus in the mid-1640s, however, porcelain production at


the major


centre of Jingdezhen was disrupted. Te Dutch East India Company turned to its Japanese contacts to find an alternative supply, and by the late 1650s kilns in Arita, on the Japanese island of Kyushu, were supplying both Dutch and Chinese merchants. In England, Japanese porcelain was known, in characteristic orientalist fashion, as ‘Japan China’. One of the new types of porcelain


Lacquered cabinet on stand, Japanese, late 17th century, 87.5 x 100.5 x 51 cm, at Blickling Hall, Norfolk © National Trust Images. Photo: Leah Band


made in Arita came to be known as Kakiemon, reputedly after a family of enamellers who had a kiln on the outskirts of the town. Te palette of Kakiemon, with its red, green, blue and yellow enamels on a clear white porcelain body, appealed to Queen Mary II (1662–94), who assembled a large collection of it (together with other types of Asian porcelain and European glazed earthenware) at Hampton Court Palace, on the outskirts of London. Te type of hexagonal Kakiemon jar in the collection at Dunham Massey is consequently


sometimes called


‘Hampton Court vase’. Te Kakiemon potters deliberately produced these jars and other vessels as sets, to appeal to the European baroque taste for


Japanned chair, English, 1670s-80s, 128 x 53 x 51 cm, at Ham House, Richmond upon Thames, purchased by HM Government 1948, transferred to the National Trust 2002 © National Trust Images. Photo: John Hammond


Portuguese and Spanish writing desks and cabinets. Although it was no doubt perceived as ‘oriental’ and


‘exotic’ by Europeans, it is effectively both Japanese and European. During much of the 17th century,


it was the Dutch East India Company which was the most active European trading presence in Japan. Te style of the lacquer objects commissioned for the European market gradually changed, with the presence of mother-of-pearl


diminishing in


favour of more pictorial decoration. From the middle of the 17th century onwards, Japanese export lacquer often featured scenery executed in high relief (takamaki-e). Although this was a technique developed for Japanese lacquer art, and the imagery was taken from the Japanese pictorial tradition, the way the motifs were distributed in relatively generic and loosely composite ways reveals (to present-day observers) that these objects were made for foreign rather than domestic markets. Japanese pictorial lacquer was also


often embellished after arriving in Europe, either to hide damage or to make the compositions more appealing to European eyes, as can be seen on one of the two caskets at Belton House, where a pair of birds has been added to the sky (on the left- hand casket). Like the table cabinet mentioned above, these caskets are in a European shape, although in this case they were inspired by late- Renaissance architecturally-inspired cabinets.


In Dutch East India


Company inventories, they are described as juweelcofferkens or ‘small jewel caskets’, and occasionally they can be seen in still-life paintings of the period, placed on tables surrounded by other rare man-made and natural products. From the middle of the 17th


century, Japanese lacquer cabinets were increasingly given a pair of side- opening doors to the front, probably


in response to northern European tastes – as can be seen in the cabinet at Felbrigg Hall. Once they had arrived in Europe, the larger cabinets were usually provided with a substantial carved wooden stand, so that they could be displayed at chest height, signifying the transition from the floor-sitting


Japanese culture in


which they had been made to the chair-sitting European interiors they were destined for. A lot of attention was lavished on the exterior decoration of the doors, in line with the appreciation of overt flamboyance which characterised the baroque style then dominant in Europe. However, these lacquer cabinets


never became entirely European – indeed, it was part of their appeal that they


represented an element of


glamorous otherness in a European interior. Te cabinet at Felbrigg Hall embodies the appreciation of texture, seasonality and visual rhyme characteristic of 17th century Japanese art. It is covered in transparent lacquer, highlighting the beauty of the wood grain in an almost modernistic way. Te imagery on the exterior of the doors represents egrets resting around an old willow tree, the bare boughs of the tree and the huddled forms of the birds indicating the winter season. Te way the shapes of the willow, the egrets and the fern leaves echo each other suggests the underlying


unity of apparently


distinct phenomena. Japanese lacquer became so


prestigious and desirable that European artisans tried to replicate its appearance using local pigments and varnishes, a phenomenon metonymically called ‘japanning’ in England. A group of nine English- made chairs at Ham House, Richmond upon Tames, were clearly inspired by Asian lacquer – some by Chinese incised lacquer, others by Japanese takamaki-e. Tey are the survivors of what appear to have been


‘garnitures’ or symmetrical groupings of ceramics – often, indeed, displayed on top of lacquer or japanned cabinets. From the 1690s an even bolder


Three Kakiemon porcelain jars, Japanese, circa 1690, 31.8 cm and 38.1 cm high, at Dunham Massey © National Trust Images. Photo: Robert Morris


three sets of chairs commissioned at various points in the 1670s and 1680s by the Duke and Duchess of Lauderdale. Te interiors of Ham contain both genuine Asian lacquer and English japanning, showing how such diverse pieces could be combined. Te chairs themselves are hybrid too, combining Japanese-inspired imagery – such as the geese on the back splat seen here – with a fantasy orientalist silhouette. Te practice of japanning flourished


in late-17th-century England, reflecting the keen interest in lacquer. A pair of japanners, John Stalker and George Parker, even published A Treatise of Japanning and Varnishing in 1688, a chatty ‘how to’ guide complete


with recipes and instructions for the various colours and surface effects and samples of orientalist


imagery.


Some of the japanners became quite skilled in evoking Japanese lacquer, and in the past their work has sometimes been miscatalogued as Japanese. With English work, though, there is often an element of fantasy in the imagery, as the artisans did not know or necessarily understand the things they were depicting. Te cabinet at Blickling Hall, for instance, has clearly been decorated to look like Japanese lacquer, but on the front left door there is a huge vase with flowers next to minute human figures, which have likely been copied by the English japanner from several Japanese


style of Japanese porcelain emerged, now known as Imari, after the Japanese port city through which it was exported. Like Kakiemon, Imari garnitures were often produced as sets, but their size, shape and decoration tended to be more flamboyant, as can be seen in the example from Osterley Park, west London. Te individual motifs all come from the Japanese pictorial tradition, but they would not have been sized and combined in this way on products made for the Japanese market. Imari wares may perhaps be characterised as


a form of


orientalism’, the exaggeration of certain aspects of one’s own tradition for foreign consumption. After the early 1690s, the Dutch


East India Company ceased buying Japanese lacquer cabinets, as the prices the lacquer artisans were asking were considered to be too high. Even so, individual East India Company officials continued to buy and sometimes


commission


‘self-


lacquer


objects. A pair of bureaux or dressing tables at Powis Castle is a striking example of this ‘private’ trade. Te bureaux and dressing mirror frames were probably made in Guangzhou, the southern Chinese port, as their shape corresponds


to pieces of


Imari porcelain jar, Japanese, circa 1700-20, 60.5 cm high, at Osterley Park, Hounslow, purchased by HM Government 1949, transferred to the National Trust 1991 © National Trust Images. Photo: John Hammond


One of a pair of bureaux or dressing tables, circa 1730-50, 174 x 80.5 x 50 cm, Powis Castle, accepted by HM Govt in lieu of inheritance tax, allocated to the National Trust 1963 © National Trust Images. Photo: Leah Band


• Emile de Bruijn’s book Borrowed Landscapes: China and Japan in the Historic Houses and Gardens of Britain and Ireland was published by Philip Wilson Publishers in 2023, ISBN 9781781300985


furniture known to have been produced there. Tey must then have been taken to Japan to be lacquered, but something was clearly lost in translation, as the Japanese lacquerers diligently covered the entire surface, including the areas where the mirrors were to go, with exquisite landscape imagery. Tey have consequently remained mirrorless – beautiful and poignant examples of the vicissitudes of global trade.


ASIAN ART | SEPTEMBER 2024


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