Oribe-Type Ewer (early 17th century): Artwork and History

Oribe-Type Ewer (early 17th century) is in the Art Institute of Chicago collection. The museum lists its creator attribution as Japan.

The work and its context

The Art Institute of Chicago describes the work:

Furuta Oribe (1544–1615) was a military general–turned–tea aesthete whose style of presentation at tea gatherings catered to the samurai class and rulers of seventeenth-century Japan. In contrast to his predecessors, Oribe preferred tea wares that were bold and eccentric rather than subtle and rustic. He was the first to recognize the beauty of artfully misshapen ceramics for use in tea gatherings. Ewers such as this were employed as water containers during the meal that preceded the tea service. Their distinctive glaze contains copper, which turned green in the firing process. This glaze, along with slightly off-kilter or distorted shapes, became trademarks of Oribe ware produced in the Mino region (now Gifu Prefecture) of Japan. This vessel features drawings of plum blossoms, wheels, a hexagonal tortoiseshell pattern, and a lattice, all done in an underglaze iron wash. This is typical of such wares, which most often do not have a single decorative theme, but rather depict a mélange of almost abstract motifs akin to the popular patterning on textiles of the period.

Object facts

• Title: Oribe-Type Ewer
• Date: early 17th century
• Artist attribution: Japan
• Place of origin: Japan
• Medium: Glazed stoneware
• Dimensions: 26.7 × 21.6 cm (10 1/2 × 8 1/2 in.)
• Type: Vessel
• Department: Arts of Asia
• Reference number: 1959.5

Collection credit

Gift of Robert Allerton

View the original

Explore the artwork in the Art Institute's collection, including its image and the museum's current catalogue details.

The description above is credited to the Art Institute of Chicago and reused under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0; HTML formatting has been converted to plain text. Other catalogue metadata and the public-domain image are provided under CC0 1.0.