Notes
- A more direct contribution to the study of the objects, the compilation of a descriptive catalogue identifying and providing information on the producers, artisans, artists, production and techniques, can be found in my thesis, Carol Morrow, ‘Meiji period ceramics from the Sydney International Exhibition of 1879’, M.A. thesis, Department of Art History and Theory, University of Sydney, 1998 (under the supervision of Associate Professor, Dr John Clark); included are appendices which reproduce archival documents of importance, systems of codification at the Exhibition, sites of representation in Sydney, and comparative tables of objects for the purpose of cross reference, history of acquisition and origins.
- The primary method of research included an examination of acquisition records, archival and curatorial files, as well as hands-on access to the extant objects—designated as having emanated from the Japanese Court of the 1879 Sydney International Exhibition—now held in the collections of the Art Gallery of New South Wales and the Powerhouse Museum, both in Sydney.
- Tomoko Sato and Toshio Watanabe, ‘The aesthetic dialogue examined, Japan and Britain, 1850–1930’, in Japan and Britain, An Aesthetic Dialogue, 1850–1930, London: Lund Humphreys, 1991, p.19; also, in O. Impey and M. Fairley, ‘Introduction’, Meiji no Takara. Treasures of Imperial Japan—Nasser D. Khalili Collection, London: Kibo Foundation, p.26, mention is made of Japanese content selected by Rutherford Alcock for the Great Exhibition of 1851.
- ibid.
- P.F. Kornicki, ‘Japan at the Australian exhibitions’, Australian Studies 8, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994, p.17.
- Chiaki Ajioka, ‘Early Mingei and the development of Japanese crafts, 1920s-1940s’, PhD thesis, Australian National University, 1996, p.107.
- ibid; Ajioka cites source of this information as Tanaka Yoshio and Hirayama Narinoby (eds), Oshu hanurankai sandô kiyô, vol. 1, 1897, pp.11–12.
- Kornicki,‘Japan…’, p.28.
- ibid, p.23.
- ibid, p.24.
- ibid, pp.26–28.
- ibid, p.23.
- Melbourne Punch, 9 September 1875, unpaginated.
- Held from 10 April to 9 May 1877 at the Exhibition Building, Prince Alfred Park, Sydney
- ‘The exhibition’, Sydney Morning Herald, 18 April 1877, p.2.
- Advertisement for an auction of ‘Japanese and Chinese Courts of the present Metropolitan and Intercolonial Exhibition’, Sydney Morning Herald, 1 May 1877, p.9; mention is also made of a descriptive catalogue that will be compiled and distributed to the public, although none to date has been found.
- ‘The exhibition’.
- Kornicki, ‘Japan…’, p.33; additional biographical material on Smedley can be found in John Clark, Japanese-British Exchanges in Art, 1850s-1930s, London: privately published, 1989.
- ‘Catalogue of the New South Wales Academy of Art, 1877’, Trustees’ Minute Book—1874–1880, NSW Academy of Art, unpaginated, Art Gallery of New South Wales, archive.
- Official Record of the Sydney International Exhibition, 1879, Sydney: Thomas Richards, Government Printer, 1881, pp.xxiv and xxxii.
- Kornicki, ‘Japan…’, pp.34–35.
- ‘Profile of the Japanese Commissioners’, Australian Town and Country, 28 February 1880, p.401.
- Christopher Dresser, Traditional Arts and Crafts of Japan, New York: Dover, 1994, p.3 (first published as Japan: Us Architecture, Art, and Art Manufacturers, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1882).
- Japan's first national museum, the nascent Imperial Household Museum, renamed Tokyo National Museum in 1952, was set up in 1872 by Machida Hisanari, who was amongst one of the early delegation of students in 1863 and 1865 to study European business and other matters. Impressed by South Kensington Museum, Japan saw the establishment of its own museum as contributing to its attempts to westernise through the arts (Impey and Fairley, ‘Introduction’, in Meiji no Takara…, p.26).
- Edward Combes sat on both the ‘Arts’ and ‘Manufacturers’ committees and was a Trustee of the New South Wales Academy of Art, which became the National Art Gallery of New South Wales in 1880.
- See entries, ‘Manufacturers’ and ‘Arts’ (for ‘Ceramics, Pottery, Porcelain and Glass, &c.’) and ‘Report of Judges, and Awards’ (for ‘Sculpture and Painting’), in Morrow, ‘Meiji period ceramics…’, Appendix II, pp.115–16.
- Official Record of the Sydney International Exhibition, 1879, pp.lxxxiv–lxxxv.
- ibid, p.467.
- ibid, p.468.
- ibid, pp.206–08 and 481 respectively.
- Sato Doshin, ‘The policies of the Meiji government for the promotion of the craft industries and the export trade’, in, Meiji no Takara… p.62.
- ‘Notes’ on the Sydney International Exhibition of 1879, Sydney: Thomas Richards, Government Printer, 1880, p.101.
- ibid.
- Sydney Morning Herald, 15 November 1879 (clipping from Trustees’ Minute Book—1874–80, NSW Academy of Art, unpaginated).
- ibid.
- ibid.
- Article, marked as originating from the Sydney Daily Telegraph, 30 March 1880, in Newspaper clippings of the Sydney International Exhibition, 1879–80, Mitchell Library, Sydney; the article contained extensive coverage of the presentation including contents of letters and gifts. Subsequently, original letters and catalogues of the gift to the Colony of New South Wales were found in the Archives Office of New South Wales.
- ibid.
- ibid.
- Register 1\2481, Document 80\2737 attached to 80\3273, Archives Office of New South Wales; this letter is hand written on parchment paper with an officially-printed letterhead in blue ink, top right hand corner, which reads: ‘The Imperial Japanese Commission for the International Exhibition. Sydney’; a hand-written date, 26 March 1880, is inserted.
- ibid.
- ibid.
- For complete listings, see Morrow, ‘Meiji period ceramics…’, Appendix I, pp.111–14.
- New South Wales Academy of Art was founded 24 April 1871; in 1880 it had a name change to the National Art Gallery of New South Wales; and in 1958 to the Art Gallery of New South Wales, by which name it is still known.
- Trustees’ Minute Book—1874–1880, NSW Academy of Art, unpaginated, but the fact that the report appears in the early pages of this book, which is in scrapbook form and contains various items including press clippings, Annual Reports, hand-written correspondence, etc., indicates the early nature of records.
- The writer of the appeal is believed to be Andrew Garran (1825–1901), editor of the Sydney Morning Herald 1873–1885. Born and educated in England, Garran graduated from London University (BA 1845, MA 1848), and arrived in Australia in 1850; in 1876, he became a commissioner for the Philadelphia International Exhibition, and in 1879 for the Sydney International Exhibition—he was also chairman of the Exhibition's ‘Art’ committee (E.K. Bramsted, ‘Garran [Gamman], Andrew’, in Douglas Pike (ed.), Australian Dictionary of Biography, vol. 4, 1851–90, Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1972, p.233; and Official Record of the Sydney International Exhibition).
- ‘Editorial’, Sydney Morning Herald, 11 July 1874, p.6.
- ibid.
- ibid.
- Copy of editorial in the Trustees’ Minute Book—1874–1880, NSW Academy of Art, placed in book before ‘Fifth Annual Report 1875–76’; it is probably a Sydney Morning Herald editorial by Andrew Garran, although no confirmation has been made. It might be noted that Andrew Garran was intended for the Congregational ministry, and part of his education was theological; he was appointed a ‘Christian instructor’ in England prior to his emigration to Australia (Bramsted, ‘Garran…’). The editorial's content suggests that it was written sometime shortly after the Agricultural Society Show held 25 April-6 May 1876; reference to Japan may further suggest a date of 1876 and refer to the invitation to the Italian painter Antonio Fontanesi (1818–82) to teach at Kobu Bijutsu Gakko (Technical Art School), when the first institution for studying western art in Japan, was founded (Atsushi Tanaka, ‘Western-style painters in early Meiji period’, in Development of Western Realism in japan, exhibition catalogue, Tokyo: National Museum of Modern Art, 1985, and Osaka: National Museum of Art, 1986, p.31). Fontanesi was joined by Vincenzo Ragusa (who was to teach sculpture) and Giovanni Vincenzo Cappelletti (who was thought to have been an experienced architect); all set sail for Japan from Naples 18 July 1876 (Ellen Conant, ‘Principles and pragmatism: the Yatoi in the field of art’, in Edward R. Beauchamp and Akira Iriye (eds), Foreign Employees in Nineteenth-Century Japan, Boulder: Westview Press, 1990, p.146).
- Sydney Morning Herald, 19 September 1874. A small insert entitled, ‘Painting’, gives details of works he is engaged in, which include a group of portraits of the three children of P.A. Jennings, who would become the Executive Commissioner of the 1879 Sydney International Exhibition.
- Mounted in Trustees’ Minutes Book—1874–1880, NSW Academy of Art.
- Charles Buckland, Secretary, Australian Museum, letter, 16 April 1880, Register 1\2481, Letters and attachments 80\3273, Archives Office of New South Wales.
- Trustees’ Minute Book 1880–1891, National Art Gallery of New South Wales, p.66. There is also a record of a following letter [#4300], dated 21 June 1881, requesting that a room be set apart for vases (Colonial Secretaries Correspondence, Archives Office of New South Wales, Index 1881 [2957]). However, the letter has been removed from these archives to an unidentified location. Recorded in the same Index, is another letter (#4460), dated 24 June 1881, from the Art Gallery expressing thanks for the vases and saying that a special room had been set aside for their acceptance; this, too, has been removed.
- Montifiore's interest in Japan can be linked to an etching in the collection of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Street in a town, japan, 1872 (Art Gallery of New South Wales, acc.#128, 1981). This same interest was shared by his brother, Edward Levi Montifiore, who was taught etching by Maxine Lalanne in Paris (see Nicholas Draffin, ‘An enthusiastic amateur of the arts: Eliezer Levy Montifiore, in Melbourne 1853–71’, Art Bulletin of Victoria, no.28, 1988, pp.92–108. An etching by Edward Levi Montifiore exhibited at the Paris Salon in 1879, Bronze Japonais (#5762–6), was included in Le Japon- isme, an exhibition held May—August 1988 at the Galeries Nationales du Grand Palais, Paris.
- Attachment to letter #2737, bundled with #3273, Register 1\2481, Archives Office of New South Wales; italics added.
- Trustees’ Minutes, NSW Academy of Art, 6 April 1880, Trustees’ Minute Book—1874–1880, NSW Academy of Art. There has not, to date, been any conclusion regarding all of these purchases; it seems that the Bronzes purchased for £110 are Art Gallery of New South Wales #995111 and 2, and the Plaque is Large Plate with Carp design, Art Gallery of New South Wales #1250; the others are debatable.
- See Morrow, ‘Meiji period ceramics…’, ‘Site Representation of the Japanese Presentation from the 1879 S.I.E.’, Appendix III, pp.117–19.
- Photographs, 1880, Art Gallery of New South Wales, archive.
- ‘Notes of the day’, unidentified newspaper clipping, mounted in Trustees’ Minute Book, 1874–1880, undated, unpaginated, Art Gallery of New South Wales, archive.
- Sydney Illustrated News, vol.XVII, no.12, 20 November 1880, unpaginated.
- ibid.
- J.R. Fairfax, Photographs of the Pictures in the Art Gallery of NSW, 1880–1883, F708.9944\1, Art Gallery of New South Wales, archive. This book of photographs was compiled for Eliezer Levi Montifiore to use as an aid for the illustrations of the Gallery catalogues; it includes photos of major paintings of the collection, rooms, etc.
- It was reported at the Trustees’ meeting, 19 July 1881, that £250 had been expended for showcases for vases.
- See Morrow, ‘Meiji period ceramics…’, Appendix I, pp.111–14.
- See Morrow, ‘Meiji period ceramics…’, Appendix III, pp.117–19.
- Shown in a partial floor plan of the building in the third edition of the National Art Gallery of NSW Illustrated Catalogue, 1886; it is located at the distant right-hand side of the Central Hall.
- Heather Johnson, The Sydney Art Patronage System 1890–1940, Sydney: Bungoona Technologies, 1997, p.31.
- Minutes from a Special Meeting of Trustees, 19 June 1925, National Art Gallery Minute Book, 11\3163, 25 May 1923–28 November 1929, p.712.
- On the official letterhead of the Public Library of New South Wales, dated 10 June 1925, and signed by Ifould; pasted into Trustees’ Minute Book, p.722.
- A Register\Applied Art (MAAS) Stockbook A2059-A2920 Fiche 3 of 4 Year 1925, p.147, Powerhouse Museum, archives; an incorrect date of 1924 is entered in this ledger, causing much confusion over the years, but Helen Yoxall, archivist, at the Powerhouse Museum (formerly Technological Museum) has identified the correct date to be 1925.
- National Art Gallery of NSW Illustrated Catalogue, 1926 edition, Art Gallery of New South Wales, archive.
- ibid.
- Claire Roberts, Decorative Arts and Design from the Powerhouse Museum, Sydney: Powerhouse Publishing, 1991, unpaginated.
- Annual Report, Technological Museums, Dept of Public Instruction, Technical Education Branch, 1906, p.2.
- T.G. Vallance, ‘Laseron, Charles’, in Bebe Nairn and Geoffrey Searle (eds), Australian Dictionary of Biography, vol.9, 1891–1939, Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1983, p.675.
- C.F. Laserson, First Exhibition of the NSW Collection of Applied Art, Sydney: Farmer & Company Exhibition Hall, 2–14 May 1927 (PAM 738 LAS, Powerhouse Museum, archive).
- Annual Report [for year ending 1924], Sydney: Technological Museum, 1925, p.6.
- Superintendent of Government Stores Department, letter to Curator, Technological Museum, 27 July 1928, re: Y\2, MRS202-Inwards Correspondence, 1881–1952, File 1928\1218, Doc. Reference #4018 (944), Powerhouse Museum, archive.
- ibid, A2569; pieces outlined in same correspondence file appear to be lists for delivery to various locations on 17 September 1928.
- See Morrow, ‘Meiji period ceramics…’, especially chapter 3, ‘Early Meiji ceramics-traditions & transitions of export ware’, pp.40–73 and ‘Catalogue of Meiji Period Ceramics, C.1879’, pp.76–110.
- Special thanks go to the curators, Jackie Menzies and Dr Chiaki Ajioka from the Art Gallery of New South Wales, and Claire Roberts from the Powerhouse Museum for access to the objects. Thanks also go to my supervisor Dr John Clark and Dr Chiaki Ajioka for their reading and translation of marks on the ceramics.
- Art Gallery of New South Wales, acquisition #2390–1 and #2457, respectively (Morrow, ‘Meiji period ceramics…’, cat.#2, 3). For Fukagawa marks see Nancy Schiffer, Japanese Porcelain, Atglen: Schiffer Publishing Ltd, 1986, p.93; Japonisme for the Western World, Pottery of the Meiji Era, exhibition catalogue, Museum of Contemporary Ceramic Art and the Shigaraki Ceramic Cultural Park, Chunichi Shimbun Co. Ltd, 29 September—24 November 1996, p.110; and essay by Hidenori Sasaki, in Japonisme for the Western World…, pp.22–23, regarding orchid mark as indication of early production ware from 1875–79. Also note: the present location of one of the small blue Dragon and Phoenix vases is unknown; it was most likely part of the transfer to the Technological Museum in 1925 as it does appear in the photograph of the ‘Vase Room’ in the Art Annex shortly after its acquisition in 1881.
- Schiffer, p.62.
- Hidenori Sasaki, ‘Arita pottery in the end of Edo period and Meiji eras’, in Japonisme for the Western World… This essay gives the most detailed account to date, in English, of the history of the modern factories and companies from Arita.
- ibid, p.21.
- National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo (ed.), Modern Japanese Painted Porcelain, New York and Tokyo: Weatherhill, Inc., 1980; p.20, dates this to 1875, when Eizaemon Fukagawa opened a porcelain company known as Koransha.
- ibid, p 22; also see this catalogue (photographs pp. 47–54) for examples of Koransha and Fukagawa production.
- Sasaki, ‘Arita pottery…’, p.22.
- Gunhild Avitabile, ‘Gottfried Wagener (1831–1892)’, in Meiji no Takara…, p. 98.
- Art Gallery of New South Wales, acquisition #1250 (Morrow, ‘Meiji period ceramics…’, cat.#4); and pair—one at Art Gallery of New South Wales (#2447) and one at Powerhouse Museum (#A2569–1) - (Morrow, ‘Meiji period ceramics…’, cat.#5).
- Art Gallery of New South Wales, acquisition #2439 and Powerhouse Museum, #A2569-3\1:2 (Morrow, ‘Meiji period ceramics…’, cat.#6).
- Art Gallery of New South Wales, acquisition #2459 (Morrow, ‘Meiji period ceramics…’, cat.#7).
- Yasuhiro Nakano, ‘Trade pottery in Seto and Mino in the Meiji era’, in Japonisme for the Western World…, p.15.
- Ajioka, ‘Early Mingei…’, pp.109–10.
- ibid, p.112.
- Noriko Otsuki, ‘Export pottery of the Meiji era’ in Japonisme for the Western World…, p.30.
- Toyojiro Hida, ‘Exporters of Meiji decorative arts’, in Meiji no Takara…, vol.1, p 92.
- ibid, p.76.
- Art Gallery of New South Wales, acquisition #2458 and Powerhouse Museum, acquisition #5723\1:2 (Morrow, ‘Meiji period ceramics…’, cat.#10).
- Louise Allison Cort, Seto and Mino Ceramics, Japanese Collections in the Freer Gallery of Art, Washington: Smithsonian Institute, and University of Hawaii Press, 1992, p.213.
- ibid.
- ibid.
- Nakano, ‘Trade pottery…’, p.12.
- ibid, p.16.
- Dresser, Traditional Arts and Crafts…, pp.395–97.
- Louis Lawrence, Satsuma, London: Dauphin Publishing, 1991, p.141.
- Faience ware was named after Faenza, Italy, the place of original manufacture of a fine grade of painted and glazed pottery or porcelain, and was used to describe the tin- glazed earthenwares (like majolica and delftware) from Spain, France, Germany, and Scandinavia.
- O. Impey and M. Fairley, ‘Japanese earthenware of the Meiji period’, in Meiji no Takara…, vol. 5—Earthenware, pp.18–34.
- ibid, p.20.
- Art Gallery of New South Wales, acquisition #2448 and Powerhouse Museum, #A2569–2 (Morrow, ‘Meiji period ceramics…’, cat.#23).
- See Haga Kôshirô, ‘The wabi aesthetic through the ages’, in N. Hume (ed.), Japanese Aesthetics and Culture, New York: State University of New York Press, 1995, p.248.
- Cited in Elise Evett, Critical Reception of Japanese Art in late 19th century Europe, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Research Press, p. 100.
- F. Baekeland, Imperial Japan: the Art of the Meiji Era, Cornell: Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, 1980, p.197.