Plate with VOC monogram
(1690-1710)
Medium
porcelain (hard-paste)
Measurements
(5.7 × 38.6 cm) diameter
Credit Line
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Gift of Christopher Begg in honour of Patricia Begg OAM, 2024
© Public Domain
Gallery location
17th Century & Flemish Paintings Gallery
Level 2, NGV International
About this work
Porcelain was first made in Japan in the early seventeenth century at kilns in and around Arita, in the northern part of the western island of Kyushu. The earliest pieces were designed for the domestic market. When the decline of the Ming dynasty in China in the 1650s disrupted porcelain production at Jingdezhen, the manufacture of Japanese porcelain intended for export to Europe increased. The centre of this plate bears the VOC monogram of the Dutch East India Company, the only Europeans permitted to maintain a trading post in Japan from 1639 until the opening of the country to the rest of the world in the 1850s.