Lot 32. A porcelain dish, Nabeshima ware, Okawachi official kilns, Hizen (Imari city), Edo period (1680-1720). Estimate $50,000 - $70,000. Unsold. Photo Christie's Image Ltd 2016.

The circular dish on raised foot, decorated in underglaze-blue and polychrome enamels with water hollyhocks, underside with three tasseled coin clusters and comb-tooth band around the foot; 8 in. (20.3 cm.) diameter. With wood box.

Note: Americans have long appreciated the fawless glaze and stunning designs of Nabeshima wares. There are more than 100 examples in the collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, many on exhibition in the 2015 exhibition “Discovering Japanese Art: American Collectors and the Met.” Americans who honeymooned in Japan in the late nineteenth century played a major role in augmenting the Met’s collections. Charles Stewart Smith (1832–1909), a trustee of the Met, was involved in the dry goods business and primarily collected European paintings. While on honeymoon with his third wife in Japan in 1892, he acquired Japanese ceramics from the British collector Captain Frank Brinkley (1841–1912) and shipped more than 400 pieces directly to the museum in 1893. Valentine Everit Macy (1871–1930), a New York industrialist and philanthropist, who was Commissioner of Parks, and his wife, Edith Carpenter Macy (1869–1925), also collected Japanese ceramics on their Japan honeymoon in 1896. These were subsequently given to the Met in the early 1920s.

For dishes with the same design, see Asahi Shinbun, ed., Les Cadeaux au Shogun; Porcelaine Précieuse des Seigneurs de Nabeshima, exh. cat. (Tokyo: Asahi Shinbunsha, 1997), pl. 64 and 65.

Christie's. AN INQUIRING MIND: AMERICAN COLLECTING OF JAPANESE AND KOREAN ART, 15 April 2016, New York, Rockefeller Plaza