BURNISHED STONEWARE Technique: This is really a creative use of different painting and glazing techniques over slip.  Items created this way are unusual to find.  They are referred to simply as “Burnished Gold” or “Burnished Stoneware,” not that it is actual stoneware, but that it is designed to resemble stoneware. The item is decorated in low relief Moriage which is slip applied to the body using the itchin. Motifs, such as the Howo bird or floral treatments are created on the body. The various colors were applied to the body by spraying pigments onto the raised areas and then the paints are “moved around” to create the desired effect with a brush or other tool.  Early spray methods were time consuming and took a great deal of skill. Historians tell us that by the Nippon era the use of the aerograph – a spray painting tool -  had been mastered so it makes sense that this tool was used to apply some of the areas of the design on these wares. It was then finished in a gold “wash” to give it the burnished look which made it resemble an historic artifact. These are marked with Green JVP 47 which places the production of these pieces between 1911 and 1921 in the new factory built by Morimura Brothers, Nippon Toki Kaisha in Noritake.

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