Articles

Bottle. Satsuma ware. Edo period, 18th century. Stoneware with cobalt under colorless glaze. H. 8 in. Courtesy of the Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institution, 92.26.
In short, the late nineteenth century was a time when categories of Japanese ceramics were not fixed. Japanese potters were redefining their positions. American and European pa­trons were groping toward defi­nitions of quality and trying to sort out the differences among ethnographic specimens, pieces aimed at the foreign mar­ket, and objets d'art.
If one thinks of time as moving forward and backward, then place might be thought of as a move in a lateral direction or from left to right; from side to side. The artist, doing significant work, is affected in his or her work by both these notions of location.