Sometsuke Sencha Teapot and Cups

This fan-shaped woodcut, printed entirely in blue, presents an elegant still life of a sometsuke blue-and-white ceramic teapot and a couple of cups—used to imbibe Chinese-style sencha tea—against a saturated, dark toned azure background. This little print by Yamada Hōgyoku, an artist trained in the Rinpa school, encapsulates the huge impact created by the more widespread use of the imported pigment Prussian blue in woodblock prints beginning around 1830.

On the front of the teapot accompanying the design of chrysanthemums is a Chinese verse couplet reading:

九日東籬菊　三秋香更佳

On the ninth day, chrysanthemums
by the eastern fence
that blossom in the autumn season
are ever more fragrant.
(Trans. John T. Carpenter)

“Ninth day” 九日 here refers to the Double Ninth or Chongyang (Japanese: Chōyō) Festival, traditionally held on the ninth day of the ninth lunar month. One activity associated with the festival is ascending a height, usually a mountain or a tower, to symbolically avoid getting sick from an epidemic. The use of the phrase “by the eastern fence” also immediately calls to mind a line from the famous poem by the Chinese recluse-poet Tao Yuanming (Tao Qian, 365?–427) that would have been familiar to all well-read Japanese of the day.