Japanese Export Porcelain

By Oliver Impey

Published by Hotei Publishing

The Ashmolean Museum’s collection of Japanese export porcelain is perhaps the most comprehensive collection in the West. The present catalogue includes only the export wares, the Arita, Ko-Imari and Kakiemon porcelains of the years between about 1660 and 1740, the peak period of the trade. More than 400 pieces are included in the catalogue, each illustrated – some more than once – in colour, with some comparative material. This is probably the largest corpus of Japanese export porcelain published in any single volume, and will be an invaluable source for comparative studies. Many pieces have never been published before.

Dr Oliver Impey is Senior Assistant Keeper in the Department of Eastern Art, the Ashmolean Museum; Reader in Eastern Art, Oxford University; and a Fellow of Green College. He is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London. He lectures in the University of Oxford on the History of Japanese Art. He has been a Visiting Research Professor at Gakushuin University in Tokyo and at Copenhagen University in Denmark, and a Senior Visiting Fellow at the Metropolitan Museum, New York. He is a former Chairman of the International Committee for Museums of Applied Art of the International Council of Museums, and a former President of the Oriental Ceramic Society. He is Co-Editor of the Journal of the History of Collections. He was one of the organisers of The Great Japan Exhibition at the Royal Academy, London, 1981-2 and author of much of the catalogue, and similarly of Porcelain for Palaces, the fashion for Japan, 1650-1750 at the British Museum in 1990.