Antique English Imari Vase – Hand Painted Japan Pattern Cache Pot, Twin Gilt Handles, Scalloped Rim, Cobalt, Iron Red & Gold, c. 1890

A small twin-handled cache pot — a holder rather than a drinking vessel, with a plain white interior and a gently canted body that rounds at the corners. Two gilt loops rise above a scalloped rim. Around the outside runs an Imari garden: iron-red blooms, cobalt leaves, green sprigs, and a gold-and-blue fence banding the lower body. It stands about the height of a teacup.

Everything here was done by hand. The border is the tell: a gold ground carrying continuous dark-blue spirals drawn in fine pen-work, with serrated leaf shapes reserved out in white and red cartouches between them — built up in layers and fired more than once. The gold dots on the red petals vary in size and spacing, the way a brush leaves them rather than a transfer. Both handles were pinched by hand and luted on; a faint seam and the squeeze of the potter's fingers are still visible where they meet the rim. Where the gilding has worn at the tips, a warm reddish base coat shows through — the sizing that hand-applied gold was laid over.

Circa 1890, and quite possibly earlier. The base is entirely unmarked, so the date rests on the work itself: hand-painting and hand-gilding of this order belong to the long nineteenth century rather than to the printed wares that followed. An absent mark is not unusual — several English factories left small decorative pieces unsigned.

England. The pattern descends from Japanese Imari porcelain, carried into Europe by Dutch traders and taken up by the English factories from the Regency onward, where it became what the trade simply called "Japan pattern." Derby, Spode, Coalport and Minton all made versions; this sits in that company, though without a mark it would be wrong to name one.