Baraset House offers a superb collection of Japanese porcelain produced in Arita during the Golden Age of early enamelled porcelain. The brilliant milky-white porcelain produced on Kyushu Island was known as 'White Gold' to European nobility and aristocrats - after the closure of the majority of kilns at Jingdezhen due to the dynasty change from Ming to Qing in the mid-17th century, the Dutch East India Company turned to Japan to fill its large orders of porcelain being shipped to the ruling houses of Europe.

 

The European obsession with Chinese & Japanese porcelain during the 17th and 18th centuries cannot be overstated - countless royals and nobles of Western Europe suffered a maladie de porcelaine; the most fanatical being King Augustus The Strong of Saxony who was famously known for trading an entire regiment of his Saxon Dragoon Guards for a group of the coveted porcelain pieces. By the fall of the Ming dynasty in 1644, a system of stylized overglaze enamelling on milk-white porcelain began developing in Arita which has been credited to the Kakiemon family -  these pieces created a sensation when they began to appear in Europe in the mid to late seventeenth century.