Traditions & history
JapanTraditions & history
Arita porcelain
The first Japanese porcelain, later copied by Meissen and Delft.
On the mapSaga
When the turmoil at the end of the Ming interrupted Chinese exports around 1650, the Dutch East India Company turned to Arita: within half a century hundreds of thousands of pieces sailed to Europe, where the Meissen and Delft manufactories imitated them. The kakiemon style, asymmetric decoration on milky white, and the Imari style, loaded with red and gold, are clearly distinct. The village still holds about a hundred workshops and a ceramics fair that draws a million visitors during Golden Week.