"PAINTING SUNSETS"..TEACUP TUESDAY

" Red sky at night , Sailors delight, Red Sky in morning. Sailors take warning " ... 

Five  minutes to sundown ... I just had to capture the beauty of the evening. It was a Pandora's box type of sky, that transported the heart and soul into the imaginative  realm of childhood...  How well I remembered, painting the skyscapes on the  murals in my Grade 3 classroom... What fun !!!!

 For sure, I wasn't the only budding, young artist that had ever attempted to recreate the glory of a sunset with crayolas or tempra paints ...The Japanese have been scribing and duplicating the delicate balance of nature on their porcelain and ceramics for centuries...

Often, hidden in the dustiest corners of the old curiosity shops, are these handpainted artisan cups and saucers from Japan, or they may even  be from  China ... I'm not sure of their origin, since there are no marking ...which may mean  that it is  pre-1900's.  I was once told that, as a  general rule,  " the older  and more genuine the item, the less chance it has of being marked."

 

Meito china is a popular  Japanese brand, that was founded in 1908, by former Noritake engineer Kotero Asuki... although most of the china bears the backstamp Meito, many decorative handpainted pieces, such as my cups, have been traced to either a pre-dated time prior to  the ' Occupied Japan ' era or to the forefathers of this company.

I'm not an art dealer, nor am I overly concerned with the identifying marks of the porcelain. To me, "the beauty is in the eye of the beholder", and I admire ceramics that have, what we sometimes call.
 " the artists' touch "!!!

One can only imagine the artisan choosing the color palette for this porcelain .... surely he/she was influenced by mother nature.  I often feel that these cups and saucers bring purpose of existence into the teacup world. I think of them as not merely vessels of sipping but as  instruments of bonding one world to another or one tea lover to another.

While the artists' vision is a more subdued orange, than my pink sunset, it still maintains a reverent passage and compatible scope of sharing... It is a gift of time passing !!!

I love the gentle sweeps of the paint brushes on this saucer ... I love the feel of the cup in my hand and I love, how the light filters through the fine, translucent  porcelain.

These little cups are not perfectly symmetrical and the artwork varies according to the brush stroke of their creator . Certainly, this set is not a collectors' dream, as they are not opulent nor grand. I call them my little country bumpkins!!! ( Ha ha) 

Yes... When the sun begins to go down on a warm autumn night, they are the  friendly little cups that share the  comfort of teatime, nestling me quite nicely into the last chapter of Jane Austens', "Pride and Prejudice".   Don't you just love that " Mr. Darcy "!!!!