Apothecary bottle with mynas and peonies

Japan

c. 1660–80

Arita ware, Imari type, porcelain with underglaze cobalt blue

Minneapolis Institute of Art

In the 16th and 17th centuries, blue-and-white porcelains made at China’s famed Jingdezhen kilns were extremely popular in Europe, where the technology required to produce porcelain would not be known for another two hundred years. When the Jingdezhen kilns entered a period of decline in the mid-17th century, porcelain makers in Arita, a town in far western Japan, seized the opportunity. They began making blue-and-white porcelains featuring European shapes and Chinese-style decoration for export to Europe. The combinations of flowers and birds used on <br /> many of these works—like myna birds and peonies— <br /> came from tradition