Rookwood Pottery, Cincinnati, OH

The Rookwood Pottery Company was influential to the American Arts and Crafts pottery aesthetic of the late 19th and early 20th century. Many early Rookwood works drew inspiration from Japanese artworks and design, which were increasingly available throughout America at this time. Several pieces in this collection were made by Kataro Shirayamadani, a Japanese ceramicist brought by Rookwood to Cincinnati in the early 20th century to add technical expertise and to increase the authenticity of its East Asian aesthetic. Floral symbolism was a part of East Asian aesthetics that was highly valued by Western audiences, as seen in these two bowls. Both the lotus and the magnolia flowers are reminders of specific admirable traits that humans should aspire to in their daily lives such as enlightenment, loyalty and friendship.

Rookwood potters looked to China for inspiration as well. These two works, from the mid-1920s, reimagine Chinese glazing. One emulates the flow of colored glazes on Tang Dynasty (618-907) ceramics, as applied in the “three-colored” 三彩 (sancai) dripped technique made famous by iconic Chinese ceramics like Tang dynasty horses. The other ceramic merges that dripped technique with underglaze blue and red designs popular from the Ming dynasty (1368-1644) onward.

Kataro Shirayamadani’s Octagonal lidded box from 1924 blends together ideas of old and new “golden age” styles of design to create a uniquely American style, tying together East Asian decoration and the Art Deco Movement’s emphasis on innovation. With its use of minimal colors and style of glaze application, the Octagonal lidded box also exudes ideas of Chinese sancai ceramicware. Literally translating to “three colors” sancai, also known as tri-colored pottery, is a glazing process that originated in Tang Dynasty China (circa 618-907 CE). The Tang Dynasty is known as “the Golden Age of Medieval China” because it was a time of thriving arts in China; poetry, music, and paintings were generating new ideas about Tang culture. -Written by Lydia Jasper