Minneapolis Institute of Art

Dish with Chinese boys in a garden

Japan

Date

19th century

Medium

Arita ware, Imari type, porcelain with underglaze cobalt blue, overglaze enamels, and gold

Department

Asian Art

Institution

Minneapolis Institute of Art

In the center of this dish, two Chinese boys wearing ancient Chinese garb are surrounded by garden rocks, tropical plants, and flowering trees, all depicted in the standard iro-e colors—green, red, yellow, and gold over underglaze blue. The fence behind the boys helps identify their location as a palace garden. Pictures of aristocratic ancient Chinese boys in gardens had been introduced by the 1300s from China, where they appeared as good luck motifs on paintings, ceramics, and lacquerware. They remained a popular pictorial motif on Japanese decorative objects through the 1800s. Asia

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