Delftware vs Kakiemon
デルフト焼 / 柿右衛門様式
Both sit in Ceramic Styles, so the question is not what they belong to but how they behave. They are reached for with some of the same intent, which is where they get confused.
Delftware
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Longing for Chinese porcelain, Delft produced tin-glazed pottery of its own. Windmills, ships and Eastern scenes painted in blue alone fixed 'blue and white' as a Western language of table and room, chinoiserie put into practice.
Kakiemon
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Porcelain from the Arita district of Hizen, painted with bright enamels laid over the glaze on a fine white body. The name comes from a family of decorators said to have brought overglaze enamelling to Arita in the 1640s. Wide areas of the white body are left bare and the painting is pushed to one side of them.
| Delftware | Kakiemon | |
|---|---|---|
| Era | 1600s– | 17th century– |
| Family | Ceramic Styles | Ceramic Styles |
| Kind | Style | Style |
| Cues | Painting in blue alone / White tin-glaze ground / Eastern motifs translated / From tiles to tableware | The enamel sits on top of the glaze, so only the painted areas stand slightly proud and catch the light / Thin red, green and blue lines with gilding, drawing prunus, bamboo, birds and figures / More bare white body than painting, with the centre left open and the motif pushed to an edge / Figures of people and animals as well as vessels, painted in the same enamels and gilding |
| Best used for | Pulling tableware and walls into one room through blue painting alone · Using Eastern motifs while admitting openly that they are translations | Laying out a page where white is the subject rather than the backdrop, with the image pushed to one edge and the centre left open · Making a small palette read as expensive by keeping every line thin and the total area of colour small |
| Type | Keep marks small on the underside and leave the face to painting | Keep text small and thin, in one colour taken from the painting or in black, so it never closes up the white. |
| Composition | Let each tile stand alone, with corner motifs linking them into a field | Leave the centre of the field open and push the image to one edge. Do not balance the two sides; keep the wider margin wide. |
| Material | Cobalt on white tin glaze, painted in one pass with no correction | Thin red, green and blue lines and small patches of colour on a white ground, with gold at a few points. The ground itself stays unpainted. |
| Caution | Aiming to pass as real porcelain turns the thick earthenware body and the speed of the brush from virtues into faults. | Filling the empty ground because it looks unfinished collapses the width of the white and lets the thin enamel lines sink into it. |