Mr. Usui's Amazing Old Imari Collection

Thanks to Mark for doing the lion's share of writing recently.

Thought I would post a picture and some comments about my recent trip to see the Old Imari porcelain exhibit at the Kyushu National Museum.

This was my first trip to the museum, and the building made quite a first impression. Tucked into the woods on a hillside just outside Dazaifu City, this massive building was built to look like an ocean wave. The museum's pamphlet touts its environmental credentials with solar panels and rainwater collection systems and the like, but what struck me most was the fact they used no less than three different "seismic isolation systems" in its construction to prevent damage to the cultural assets inside. Apparently the "big one" could hit Dazaifu City directly, and nary a vase would wobble nor a wall hanging sway. It looks like they used the wood contents of a small tropical rainforest on the interior, but they claim they only used trees that were "thinned" (Is that good?).

Anyway, after paying up 1300 yen at the door (ouch!) I took the escalator up to the 3rd floor and entered the special exhibition hall. The exhibit was expansive, displaying the entire collection of a Mr. Fumio Usui, who lived in Paris and collected works of Old Imari from across Europe. In 17th and 18th century Europe, it was popular for the upper class to decorate rooms with oriental ceramics.

The explanations started with a description of the first Dutch East India Company ship, the Vogelzang, loaded with 5,748 pieces of Imari porcelain that set sail from Nagasaki on October 15, 1659, on through the boom export years of the following decade, leading to the eventual decline of the industry from cheaper Chinese competition and changing conditions in Europe.

The pieces were displayed in chronological order, from the earliest underglaze cobalt-blue wares, to the development of designs using overglaze polychrome enamels, and eventually to gold overlay.

A piece that sticks in my mind is a porcelain shaving bowl, a kind of high-class bib, with a notch cut out of the rim to place your chin, and two holes for a string to suspend the bowl under your face.

All in all it was a beautiful and informative Old Imari porcelain exhibit, and a nice afternoon trip to a spectacular musem. On the return road with the sun getting low in the sky, I put on some tunes, put the windows down, and let the warm breeze in the car. I thought to myself that while we usually celebrate the work of contemporary ceramicists on our website, it's nice to see where and how this beautiful Japanese ceramics tradition began.

Dave