Nonomura Ninsei. Incense Burner.

The mountain ascetic's trumpet

The burner belongs to the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, museum number 260-1877. It was made at the Omuro kiln in Kyoto between about 1660 and 1680. It is stoneware with a clear glaze over stippled underglaze iron brown. A stamp on the base reads Ninsei.

Its form is a conch shell trumpet. According to the V&A, it imitates the trumpets carried by yamabushi, the mountain ascetics who lived and practised in the mountains. They blew trumpets made from large sea shells, and the sound echoed across the valleys.

The burner is 11.5 cm high, 27.6 cm wide and 15.7 cm deep. It lies on its side like a shell resting on a table. It has three parts: the body, a lid, and an insert that sits inside.

The brown stippling beneath the glaze speckles the surface, recalling a real shell. Colour is kept to a minimum. Nothing is painted on top. All attention goes to the form: the spiral, the flared mouth, the curve of the body.

Ninsei and the Omuro kiln

Nonomura Ninsei is an art name. His proper name was Nonomura Seiemon, active from about 1640 to 1690. In 1647 he set up the Omuro kiln near Ninnaji temple in the northwest of Kyoto.

The V&A notes that in the 1660s and 1670s Ninsei developed a highly colourful overglaze style, close to painting. Enamel colours lay over the clay like a painted surface: flowers, mountains, gold and silver.

This burner goes the other way. There is almost no colour, only clear glaze and iron brown. The V&A describes it as restraint in tone paired with exuberance in form. Ninsei did not need to paint on the object to make it stand out. He let the shape do that.

The stamped name on the base is worth noticing. Much pottery of the time carries no maker's name. This small stamp ties the object to one person, one kiln, one style. Three and a half centuries later, the museum still reads that name and writes it into the record.

From Kyoto to Philadelphia

The V&A record traces a long journey. The burner was bought from the Japanese Commissioners at the Philadelphia Exposition of 1876 and entered the collection in 1877. About two centuries after leaving the kiln, it left Japan as a representative of Kyoto ceramics before Western visitors.

In the Meiji era the Japanese government sent large numbers of crafts to world exhibitions. Alongside newly made work, a seventeenth century burner stamped Ninsei suggests that Japan wanted to show not only what it was making, but what it considered its roots.

In Japan, a ceramic burner like this belonged to a tea room or a reception room, where incense burned gently in a small space. In London it sits in a case, without smoke. Visitors see the trumpet's shape but hear no sound and smell nothing.

The burner is worth remembering because it holds two things that have both disappeared. The sound of the trumpet it imitates. And the smell of the incense it once released. What remains is fired clay, clear glaze, and a small stamp bearing its maker's name.