Vintage view: the attractions of Japanese Satsuma ware

IN MY first years of collecting I felt a yawning cultural chasm open wide when confronted with Japanese or Chinese ceramics. 

The stunning breath of invention, the centuries of skill in the making, those mysterious themes both secular and religious — it seemed bewildering compared to those more familiar western bits ’n’ bobs of smalls and furniture. Let’s start with something juicy to the eye and probably familiar — Japanese Satsuma ware. You may even have an example of a Satsuma-style pot made in recent years hanging around the house as it’s an Oriental wonder often gifted as an inexpensive and lively shelf filler.

Just about every example you’re likely to see that’s not a misplaced modern piece of Satsuma, will be made from the 1860s forward, and termed the Meiji Period (1868-1912). Examples crafted in the Satsuma provinces of Japan, were brought to Paris for the 1867 International Exhibition and were a popular hit, their hypnotic story told in the high relief of thick polychrome colours. Ideal for cabinet treasures and dull winter mantles in London or New Jersey, Satsuma ware was shipped to the west by the boat load. Many British and American service men brought pots, figures and chargers back in their luggage from their tours of duty in the Second World War and Korea.

Named for a finger of land shattered into a slim archipelago (Satsuma Han and Kyushu Island in particular) Satsuma earthenware made in southern Japan has been known for over 400 years. It was originally made as tea making articles by Korean potters who were displaced with their defeated warlord clans. The first Satsuma was restrained stoneware finished in a heavy brown glaze. It evolved into a flashier, crowd-pleasing faience style finish that in truth answered western tastes rather than those of the Japanese. What you are looking for is a creamy/brown coloured body with a finely crazed glaze decorated in treacle thick enamels in fabulous colours. It might be further enhanced with overlays of gilding. Many pieces carry moriage, a raised area of enamel decoration used for texture and to contain fields of other colours.

The pictorial flavour of Satsuma explains much of its appeal. Popular themes and crowded cartoonish romps include glamorous geishas, noble warriors, gods and dragons in fantastic stylised forms and wonderful mysterious landscapes. The typical colours floating on the cream background are blue, red, green and orange-termed polychrome. Satsuma Gosu Blue, produced in the mid 19th century, is especially rare. There is a wide degree of quality in Satsuma ware made today and in late Satsuma, as different factories and village potteries with cheap but skilled labour at their command leaped into the lucrative export market. Much Satsuma was made in other cities and their surrounding areas including Kyoto, Tokyo, Nagoya, and Yokohama.

Kyoto Satsuma is regarded as a separate type of Satsuma as it is decorated slightly differently and is lighter in colour — if you want to explore the complexities of a single genre of collecting, you will adore the brow-furrowing challenges of Oriental ceramics. You can find export ware that is clearly dashed off in factory style and other pieces that clearly took months to produce with tiny detail down to the expressive turn of a dancer’s lip or the breeze stirring a heavy branch of cherry blossom.

Satsuma pots by masters such as the Kinkozan family and potter Yabu Meizan (1880s) are rare museum-level finds and heavily faked. Wealthy Japanese and Chinese entrepreneurs and collectors having raked over their domestic market are now less sniffy about Satsuma ware and seek out the best export pieces at the top auction houses across the world. American Satsuma in Art Nouveau and Deco styling hand-painted in America from Satsuma blanks are highly desirable 20th century pieces.

Satsuma ware is still made today in the Satsuma area of Japan. Rare and even middling pieces are brilliantly reproduced and potteries across both Japan and China churned out Satsuma style wares right through the 20th century right up to the present. Authentication of a potential buy is therefore crucial (unless you’re picking a fascinating pot from the mixed €2 box at a boot sale with the rain beating on the back of your neck). Satsuma is earthenware not porcelain and should make a dull response when flicked lightly with a finger, not the clear ring of a lighter material.

Different workshops and their individual artists can be identified by their artwork and marks. The most prized form of identification is the Shimazu mark or crest — a red cross inside a circle, the mark of the original potters of Satsuma in Japan. Kanji or the Japanese script symbols giving the name of the maker and even the order of display (for two pieces or more) will follow in a vertical line. The marks should of course be painted on, not printed. No Satsuma made before 1900 will have an English word and no genuine Satsuma was or will ever be made in China. You should get to know the script for ‘Made in China’ as it’s openly painted on most contemporary pieces.