Kutani Ware | Set of Ten Sometsuke Plates with Landscape and Pavilion Design
This set of Japanese Kutani ware sometsuke landscape plates is preserved as a complete set of ten, with a wooden box. Painted in traditional sometsuke (blue-and-white) on a mellow white porcelain body, the plates depict landscapes, pavilions, trees, distant mountains and figures in boats, in a clear, elegant style with a strong Eastern literati feeling. As the photos show, each plate takes a landscape as its theme, but the compositions are not mechanically identical; natural variations can be seen in the trees, houses, mountains, shorelines and blank space. The blue lines vary in depth, layering distant and near views and conveying the quiet charm unique to traditional sometsuke porcelain. The rims are finely outlined in a dark color, focusing the picture. With a diameter of about 24.2 cm, these are large plates of a very practical size, well suited as serving plates for guests, as vessels for Japanese cuisine, or displayed upright on stands as landscape art plates.
