Three-tiered Food Container with Ten Noble Plant Design

Aoki Mokubei is very unusual in that he did not come from a ceramics background; he was born into a family owning a teashop, Kiya, in Kyoto’s Gion district, and only took up pottery at the age of 30. Associated with numerous literati figures like imura Kenkadō (1736–1802) and Rai Sanyō (1780–1832), Mokubei was so well versed
in literature that he was known as Shikiji Tōkō,the ‘literate potter’.
Ten varieties of flowering plants decorate the piece; alongside each is inscribed a pair of Chinese characters compiled by the Chinese Song-dynasty scholar-official Zeng Duanbo, who likened each of the ten flowers to a type of friend: ‘poetic friend’, ‘elegant friend’, ‘exceptional friend’, ‘sacred friend’, ‘hermitic friend’, ‘distinguished friend’, ‘excellent friend’, ‘lustrous friend’, ‘pure friend’ and ‘meditative friend’. This design, much loved by the literati, clearly illustrates why Mokubei was called ‘the literate potter’.
Mokubei’s signature is on the underside of the container in underglaze blue, whilst a dated inscription on this container's box, indicates that it was produced by Mokubei prior to the year 1815.