Dishes, design of horse eyes with iron brown

Collection NumberA000293
TitleDishes, design of horse eyes with iron brown
Date19th century
Artist, Kiln, Workshop瀬戸窯 Seto ware
Name of prefectures & citiesSeto City, Aichi Prefecture, Japan
Description of works“The natural unshackled aura...” (from The Beauty of Miscellaneous Things by YANAGI Soetsu)
These dishes are commonly known as “uma no me zara” (horse-eye dishes) with the name deriving from free-flowing swirls in tetsu-e (underglaze iron) that resemble horse’s eyes. Kilns in Seto mass-produced these dishes in the period between the latter half of the Edo period and the Meiji era.
 Two of these dishes have inscriptions on their undersides in sumi ink but they are different, suggesting that they originated from separate locations. In his writing, The Beauty of Miscellaneous Things, YANAGI Soetsu, a philosopher and one of the leaders of the Mingei (folk craft) movement, included this type of dish as an example of “the technical consummation of years of endeavor, hard-earned sweat, and endless repetition.”

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