Artworks

Plate with a hare leaping over waves and plate with a geometric motif

Artwork · Anonymous · 1650–1690 · dish · Seattle Art Museum

A pair of blue-and-white Imari plates showing the new native aesthetic: on the left, from a Kakiemon kiln (1670/90), a hare leaping over waves — a common Chinese motif, but here a Japanese image of fecundity; on the right, Kutani type (1650/90), a completely abstract asymmetrical group of five dots against a design along half the rim, perhaps a stylized samurai crest (William Rathbun). 1 Mason 2005, pp. 296–297, fig. 339. ↩ Literatur Mason 2005: Penelope E. Mason, History of Japanese Art, 2nd, Pearson Education LTD. 2005.