The unusual vessel was constructed with four thick walls and a base in a trapezoidal form, one that might also be described as a truncated pyramid. It is finished with a recessed base and a high loop handle impressed with a woven rope pattern attached on two opposite sides with rounds of clay imitating studs. The bucket is covered with a thick, milky, opaque, pale green glaze with crackling throughout. The glaze stops short of the base on the exterior and was applied over the base leaving an irregular unglazed border around the perimeter, where the exposed stoneware body has burnt a greyish-brown in color.
On our last trip to Japan in the Autumn of 2024, we were shown this vessel, unique in our experience and, of course it immediately grabbed our attention. Over the years finding something off the beaten track and new to us has always been an impetus and catalyst. So the piece entered, without much discussion, our inventory.
Vessels called mizusashi, as the present is labeled, were used for fresh water during the preparation of tea to replenish the kettle and to rinse tea bowls. They were normally equipped with covers and if not produced with a cover, a lacquer or wood one was made for it. The present has nothing about the formation of the mouth to suggest a ceramic lid was ever a part of the piece; presumably it was once equipped, as would be expected, with a wooden or lacquered wood lid.
Various specialists in the field have suggested the vessel might have been used as a vase for flowers, or as a tea caddy, or even as a charcoal container. A bucket-shaped celadon in the Tokyo National Museum is in fact described as a tea caddy (fig. 1) whereas a vessel like the Tokyo National Museum piece, from the Percival David collection and now in the British Museum, is described as a water vessel (fig. 2). And a celadon vessel illustrated in the Tokyo Bijutsu Club sale of the Ishida collection in 1930 is described simply as a tea vessel (fig. 3). It is not unnatural, however, to assume that if a bucket was a model for the piece, such as the wooden buckets sometimes used in Japanese tea ceremonies (fig. 4), the ceramic most likely was intended to hold water, a supposition supported by its box inscriptions.
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Fig. 1: Longquan celadon bucket-shaped tea caddy, late Ming dynasty, 17th century, Tokyo National Museum, after Illustrated Catalogue of Tokyo National Museum, Tokyo, 1990, pl. 527, p. 135.
Fig. 2: Longquan celadon bucket-shaped water-pot, late Ming dynasty, 17th century, Percival David Collection, British Museum, after Margaret Medley, Illustrated Catalogue of Celadon Wares, London, 1977, no. 114.
Fig. 3: Longquan celadon bucket-shaped tea vessel, late Ming dynasty, 17th century, after the sale of the Ishida family collection of Niigata, Tokyo Bijutsu Club catalogue, Tokyo, 1930, no. 254.
Fig. 4: Wooden bucket for fresh water, 16th century, Fujita Art Museum, Osaka, after Ryoichi Fujioka, Tea Ceremony Utensils, New York and Tokyo, 1973, pl. 99, p. 73.
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