There’s as proud history behind Fukagawa porcelain

M.A. sends me a boxed Japanese porcelain vase with a lovely painting of a Warbler bird on a cherry blossom branch, painted on pure white porcelain.

This is Fukagawa porcelain. The story goes back to 1616 in an area of Japan (Arita), which has since become known for the finest whites on the thinnest porcelain.

This is because a Korean potter in 1616 discovered that a slice of the rock and minerals found in the area of Arita contained a composition that made perfect porcelain.

The elder potter (eight generations ago) — the first potter of the Fukagawa family, Ezaiemon — fired up the first family kiln in Arita in the mid-17th century (1650-1680), and his kiln and factory became one of Japan's first potteries for porcelain.

By the late 17th century, he was making tableware for the imperial families of Japan and was beginning to be noticed by royalty in Europe. But of course, Japan had not been amenable to foreign trade for generations, and he had no easy way of exporting porcelain to Europe. Japan was cut off from the trading world by choice.

The Dutch had a way around this embargo and exported Arita ware, where it grew in popularity in the high class European houses. The late 18th- and early 19th-century porcelain objects made by Fukagawa are the most valuable.Japan was open for business in the third quarter of the 19th century. This is called the Meiji period in Japan, and for the West, the opening of such a country with its artistic wonders caused a craze for anything Japanese.

Monet collected Japanese woodcuts; so did Toulouse Lautrec, in France. In England, a new trend called the Aesthetic Movement was begun after scholars and art dealers began to collect the very new look of Japanese porcelain and art.

The Aesthetic Movement had the flavor of outright imitation of that Japanese curving line (think of a pagoda roof), and geometric patterns, and English furniture began to be made with this flair. But no European or English porcelain had the purity of Arita ware.

By this time, the owner of the Arita porcelain factory renamed his company with a catchier name, calling it (1875) the Company of the Scented Orchid, or Koransha. Encouraged by the fervor for anything "Japanisme," he designed a new company structure around export of the porcelain. He was also encouraged by the awards his company received at the best National Expositions (early world's fairs.)

For example, Koransha won the 1876 Philadelphia Exposition. In 1878 and 9, the company was the winner in Paris and Barcelona. Koransha wcontinued to win — in 1909 at the Alaska Yukon Pacific Exposition; in 1910 at the largest exposition known to Japan, the English-Japanese World's Fair. Then Koransha took home a prize at the Panama Pacific in San Francisco in 1915 and the grand prize in Industry at Liege in 1930.

Of course, the family name was passed to eight generations of potters — but not without incident.

In the late 19th century, the second son of the Fukagama potter who ran Koransha had the nerve to start his own kiln and his own factory, calling it Chuji Fukagawa. Then he won the biggest prize ever granted the family: the Medaille d’Or at the Paris International Exposition in 1900.

This branch of the family business was given the charter to create porcelain for the Imperial Family from 1910 till today. Bloomberg lists the concern as still up and running in Arita, where there is a museum Fukagawa showing just what the Imperial Family eats from, and other royal families’ tableware, and various vessels they have made that are today designated Heritage of Industrial Modernization pieces. This branch of the family, Chuji Fukagawa, also has offices in Milan and Arita today.

But Koransha is still going strong as well, and prides itself that although their 20th-century style pieces have modern designs, the traditional ways of making porcelain are still in force.

And even though Koransha has branched into porcelain electrical insulators for industry, it still retains the seven main older gentlemen, the artisans of Arita, who know all the secrets, and keep all the process, from clay to glazing, in house.

M.A. in Santa Barbara tells me that he would like to sell this vase, along with the paperwork of authenticity; and the softwood emblazoned box, dating from the mid-20th century for $250.

If anyone is interested, email me at [email protected], and I will put you in touch!

Dr. Elizabeth Stewart's "Ask the Gold Digger" column appears Saturdays in the News-Press.

Written after her father's COVID-19 diagnosis, Dr. Stewart's book "My Darlin’ Quarantine: Intimate Connections Created in Chaos" is a humorous collection of five "what-if" short stories that end in personal triumphs over present-day constrictions. It's available at Chaucer's in Santa Barbara.

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