Shell-shaped dish

This unusually shaped dish with glaze decorated in enamels and gold is a typical example of 19th-century Kyōto production. It emulated the older satsumayaki stoneware produced in the Satsuma Principality in southern Kyūshū. The dish depicts a company of Chinese literati enjoying tea and admiring a calligraphic scroll in typical landscape scenery. The bottom of the dish is adorned with moulded motifs of shells and conches.