The bowl is heavily built with the walls rising at a wide angle from a flat base to a flared, undulating, tri-peaked rim. Only the top of the thick rim is decorated, the decor consisting of six pairs of deeply grooved double lines each terminating in a hook dividing the rim into six segments while the three peaks rise like cresting waves at points equidistant from each other along the rim. The fabric of the bowl is thick reddish earthenware, relatively smooth on the outside and burnt blackish-grey toward the base. The interior has an irregular surface with an indented ledge below the rim.
The utter simplicity of this late Jomon period bowl and its subtlest of décor—the grooved and peaked rim—bring us to calm waters after the raging sea of Middle Jomon pottery. The bowl was likely a product of the Chiba area, suggested by ceramics found in or excavated in Chiba prefecture. A bowl with its grooved rim rising into four peaks is one example of this rare form excavated in Chiba prefecture (fig. 1). An elegant jar, characterized by the same purity of form and minimal décor formerly in the Kaikodo collection was reportedly found in Chiba and is now in a private collection (fig. 2).
Jomon, translated literally as “cord marked,” is the generic term used for the early pottery of Japan, a pottery noteworthy for its characteristic designs and methods of decoration produced through the use of cord-wrapped paddles or sticks to beat or impress the clay while still wet and workable. While the present example is hardly what we would describe as “cord marked,” it was produced by the Jomon society, named after its most characteristic pottery style but the products of that society not confined to nor determined by its name.
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Fig. 1: Deep bowl, late Jomon period, excavated in Chiba prefecture, after J. Edward Kidder, Prehistoric Japanese Arts, Jomon Pottery, Tokyo, New York and San Francisco, 1968, pl. 289, p. 205.
Fig. 2: Tall jar with peaked rim, late Jomon period, found in Chiba prefecture, after Kaikodo Journal XXX (“The Immortal Past”), Spring 2014, no. 38, p. 123.
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