Meiji Arita blue and white charger, mountain landscape

About this piece

This Arita charger is painted in blue and white with a landscape scene — a mountain rising in the background, a traditional Japanese building set among trees and hills in the foreground — bordered by a Greek key pattern running around the rim. The Greek key is a slightly unexpected touch on an otherwise classically Japanese landscape design, one of the small ways export porcelain of this period sometimes borrowed decorative conventions more familiar to Western buyers.

Blue and white Arita ware built its export reputation well before the Meiji period, but production expanded considerably once Japan opened more fully to Western trade, and landscape scenes like this one were a natural fit for the format — enough detail to reward a closer look, simple enough in palette to read clearly from across a room.

Condition notes

Good antique condition. Firing pockmarks to glaze; numerous crazing lines; overflow of glazing on the underside in one spot; spur marks.