This exquisite Kutani-ware tea set features a kyuusu (side-handle teapot), pitcher and four cups. The fuukei (風景, landscape) painting on the teapot displays an idyllic scene of a waterside building in red, black, gold and blue overglazes set among trees, rocks and flowerheads, against a mountain backdrop. The design is repeated on the teapot's lid and on the cups and pitcher.
The mark on the teapot's spout and on the bottoms of the other pieces in the set says Kutani (九谷) in the seal script with round box that is most typical of 1960s-1970s Kutani pieces, but the pot uses an interior bubble filter ("debeso"), and I don't have an estimate of when Japanese porcelain teapots began using those filters. They appear in tokoname teapots and in Chinese teapots in the 1970s, hence the wide age estimate.
The set comes in the original wooden box.
Volume:
- Teapot - 230ml to the brim
- Pitcher - 145ml to the spout
- Cups - 100ml to the brim
Dimensions:
- Teapot - 13cm across including the handle and spout, 8cm tall including the lid
- Pitcher - 9.7cm across including the handle and spout, 4.8 cm tall
- Cups - 7.7 cm across, 4.7 cm tall