Kakiemon

柿右衛門様式 / 17th century– / Style / Ceramic Styles

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.

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

Kakiemon — Kakiemon-style enamelled dish, Arita, c. 1675-1725 — Wikimedia Commons / Public domain — Kakiemon-style enamelled dish, Arita, c. 1675-1725 — Wikimedia Commons / Public domain ／ Hexagonal jar with enamelled birds and flowers, Imari ware, Kakiemon style, Edo period, 17th century — Wikimedia Commons / Public domain ／ Boy seated on a go board, Kakiemon style, c. 1680 — Wikimedia Commons / CC0

Kakiemon — Hexagonal jar with enamelled birds and flowers, Imari ware, Kakiemon style, Edo period, 17th century — Wikimedia Commons / Public domain — Kakiemon-style enamelled dish, Arita, c. 1675-1725 — Wikimedia Commons / Public domain ／ Hexagonal jar with enamelled birds and flowers, Imari ware, Kakiemon style, Edo period, 17th century — Wikimedia Commons / Public domain ／ Boy seated on a go board, Kakiemon style, c. 1680 — Wikimedia Commons / CC0

Dictionary entry

Best used for: 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 text small and thin, in one colour taken from the painting or in black, so it never closes up the white.
Composition: 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: 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: Filling the empty ground because it looks unfinished collapses the width of the white and lets the thin enamel lines sink into it.
Further study: measuring the area ratio of bare white ground to painting on late seventeenth century Arita pieces / eighteenth century European porcelain copying the same motifs placed alongside, and the differences in line weight and in how much ground is left / comparing where the gilding falls on figures and on vessels

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