JAPANESE PORCELAIN AT THE IMPERIAL COURT IN VIENNA

On the occasion of this year's World Exhibition in Osaka, Japan, the Vienna Furniture Museum is taking up the cultural connection between Austria and Japan and presenting visitors with the fascinating object show “Japanese Porcelain at the Imperial Court in Vienna” in the gallery of the Vienna Furniture Museum.

This exquisite smallscale exhibition presents Japanese porcelain showpieces from the imperial Silver Chamber in the Vienna Hofburg, a collection that derives from the legacy of Habsburg dining culture. Attesting to the enduring interest of the imperial family in Japanese porcelain that started with Charles VI, the display includes superb examples of export ware from the early eighteenth century.

When experienced close-up, the work of the Arita porcelain painters still enthralls today through the technical refinement of the underglaze blue painting that complements the polychrome overglaze enamels, the wealth of variety in the fine decors, and the figural scenes that are like windows onto traditional Japanese life. Owing their existence to an aristocratic clientele in Europe, these masterpieces of Japanese porcelain art attest to the global trade relations of the time.

The objects displayed also include items made in the Imari style by the Vienna Porcelain Manufactory that were commissioned by the imperial family to supplement services, in addition to precious vases in European eighteenth-century bronze-gilt mounts, and items that represent the revival of the fashion for all things Japanese that was rekindled in Austria by the Vienna World’s Fair of 1873.

Photo: Plate Arita around 1720, silver mount Brussels around 1750, from the estate of Archduke Karl Alexander von Lothringen / © Bundesmobilienverwaltung, Photo: Aline Schwabl