Copperplate painting cup & saucer (bird and cat, blue)
Very thin and light tea cups and plates with printings of cats and mice dressed in Kimono, a dreamaway scene back to the Meiji period in Japan
Copperplate transfer technology brought a great change in the ceramic production in the Meiji period (1868-1912). Beautiful painting can be transferred from copperplate to washi-paper and placed carefully on an unglazed surface of the ceramics before glazing
Moreover, the cup that is thin like egg shell's was extremely tight, the bottom of the cup has a watermark of a cat face. When you hold it over the light, the cat's face emerges.
In the Meiji era (1868 to 1912) in Japan, a revolutionized ceramic production invented when painting could be made by printing, it enabled mass production of many artistic ceramics that used to me painted by hand.
The typical technique is copperplate painting (copperplate transfer), which is a technique of copying a copperplate print on Japanese paper (washi paper) to a plain pottery surface.
This technique, which is prone to copy unevenness and color unevenness, is currently performed only in a limited number of factories. Some of the factory who still do copper plate painting is often using another similar technique called silk screen printing, it is to place the printing ink through the grain using a finely woven fabric such as silk as a plate. Silk-screen printing engraving is done on a copper plate that uses a brush to draw patterns by hand, using a film obtained by photographing the original image and after, printing it directly on a cloth plate, so the original image can be reproduced.
Silkscreen printing is a very effective way to make copperplate printing more easily, but it has one imperfection. Since printing is performed by printing ink through a texture, lines that are thinner than the size of one square of the texture cannot be made.
In this Copperplate printing series, the miniature painting of Atsuko Yukawa has been detaily printed onto the ultra-thin ceramic called Eggshell by using the original copperplate printing technique.
*This is an discontinued item and is in limited quantities (販売終了)
size | Cup w11.2 x φ8.7 x h 5 cm , Saucer | φ12.7 x h2 cm
material | porcelain
Porcelain Producing area Gifu
Made in Japan
> Each one is painted using the traditional method of "copper printing". As a result, bleeding, missing colors, blurring, shading, and misalignment of the pattern may occur. Please note that there are considerable individual differences in the design. We hope you enjoy it.