Sold Ceramics - Sold Japanese Imari 1690-1800 - Tableware and other Porcelain with Western Shapes - Page 1

Object 2012369

Shaving bowl

Japan

1700-1730

Height 83 mm (3.27 inch), diameter of rim 242 mm (9.53 inch), diameter of footring 93 mm (3.66 inch), weight 724 grams (25.54 ounce (oz.))

Shaving bowl on high footring. Moulded ribbed rim with a saved semi-circular section and two small holes opposite the cut-out section. Decorated in underglaze blue and overglaze iron-red, black, green enamel and gold with a jardinière on a fenced terrace filled with leafy flowering peonies. On the rim a flowering tree with leafy branches growing behind a reserve a shaped reserve filled with a flower head and leafy branches in reverse decoration alternating with flower heads on an underglaze blue ground. On the reverse two wide spread prunus sprays.

The first documentary evidence for scheerbeckens or shaving bowls is a 1662 invoice from the Director of the Deshima factory in Nagasaki regarding an order for 258 of these dishes for shipment to the Netherlands. After this point shaving dishes become a regular export item.

Shaving bowls were used by barbers and were indispensable in the Dutch household too. They were made of earthenware, pewter, copper and even silver. Beside their function as a shaving utensil, they had an alternative use, namely to let blood from a vein in the arm during blood-letting. This was a medical procedure thought to drain bad blood from the system, which was also performed by the barber/surgeon. In the seventeenth century, regulations were put in place in England to govern what barbers were permitted to do. Thus they became confined to bloodletting and treating external diseases. In Prussia the barbers' and the surgeons' guild joined in 1779, and it was said of great Prussian surgeons that they had risen "up from the barber's bowl”. Both purposes explain the semi-circular saving. The two holes in the rim are for a cord or string. A shaving basin with the actual silk string still attached was excavated in Amsterdam. The string was used to suspend it from the client's neck to catch lather and water during shaving, or to hang the bowl on the wall thus implying that owners also appreciated the bowl for its decorative value as well as its function. Shaving bowls can be seen hanging on the wall as such in some dollhouses.

Cornelis Troost, Arlequin toovenaar en barbier, 1738, Mauritshuis, The Hague, Netherlands, inv. nr. 184. In spite of the satirical intent, the painting reflects actual usage.

The doll’s house of Petronella Dunois (1650-1695), c. 1676, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, the Netherlands, inv.nr. BK-14656. Two shaving dishes are suspended on the left wall.

Chinese shaving bowls usually have the holes in the footring instead of the rim. Most Japanese barber’s bowls are more or less rounded, whereas Chinese barber’s bowls usually are oval (for a Chinese example, please see the sold archives object 2011301)

For identically shaped and sized and similarly decorated shaving bowls, please see:

Condition: A frit to the rim.

References:

Jörg 1982/2, cat. 123

Jörg 2003/1, p.184 & cat. 229

Price: Sold.