Satsuma

Nawashiro-gawa, province of Satsuma, Kiu-Siu, Japan · Fayence · also recorded as Satsuma-Yaki, Nawashiro-gawa

Transcribed by Igor Kukolj from Chaffers, William. Marks and Monograms on European and Oriental Pottery and Porcelain, 1891, Reeves & Turner, London, p.417. Scan: archive.org/details/marksmonogramson00chaf (leaf n436). Checked 22 August 2026.

Marks

The The Satsuma province character mark as engraved in Chaffers 1891, page 416 — **The Satsuma province character** · painted or impressed · *engraved in the source*Chaffers 1891, p.416
Chaffers engraves this as the mark of the PROVINCE rather than of a workshop. It identifies where a piece was made, not who made it.

What the source records

Satsuma is a province in the south-west of the island of Kiu-Siu, governed by the Prince of Satsuma.Chaffers 1891 · p.416
The body is of pipeclay, usually buff or cream, soft and porous, slightly baked, with a thick transparent but imperfect glaze whose surface is covered entirely with minute cracks.Chaffers 1891 · p.417
The ornamentation is applied UPON the glaze, many pieces painted in gold and colours with figures, flowers, birds and conventional designs.Chaffers 1891 · p.417
Ancient examples have a grey glaze and a peculiar waxy appearance, and are much prized.Chaffers 1891 · p.417
Chaffers likens the body to Henri Deux ware more than to anything else he had handled.Chaffers 1891 · p.417
Pottery was introduced to the province from Corea about 1470, when a kind of stoneware was made along with a white ware resembling Corean white porcelain.Chaffers 1891 · p.417
The finely crackled ware dates from about 1592, when the Prince of Satsuma settled several Corean potters and their families in his province — first at Kagoshima, afterwards at Chiusa in the province of Ohosoumi, and then at Nawashiro-gawa.Chaffers 1891 · p.417
Decoration in gold commenced about 1630.Chaffers 1891 · p.417
Demand at the port of Yokohama caused many cheap imitations of the old ware to be manufactured for the London market, especially at Yedo and Awata.Chaffers 1891 · p.417
Great quantities of modern Kioto ware were invoiced to Britain by European agents as Satsuma fayence and catalogued and sold as such.Chaffers 1891 · p.417
Modern Kioto ware is distinguished by a full buff tint, a light and porous body, and a bright glassy crackled varnish; the hard or semi-porcelain character of genuine Satsuma is entirely absent.Chaffers 1891 · p.417
An imitation Satsuma was made at Ota, a suburb of Yokohama, by a potter named Ko-zan, and sometimes bears his mark in a gourd-shaped cartouch.Chaffers 1891 · p.417
The ten specimens of Satsuma in the Japanese Collection were all made at Nawashiro-gawa and range in date from 1720 to 1875.Chaffers 1891 · p.417

Why this differs from other listings

The line that matters most on this page is a warning about marks themselves: genuine Satsuma 'is not always marked; all those which are evidently imitations are, like Satsuma, unmarked.' An absent mark is therefore evidence of nothing in either direction. What Chaffers offers instead is a physical test — genuine Satsuma has a hard or semi-porcelain character that modern Kioto ware entirely lacks, and Kioto reads as a full buff tint, light and porous, under a bright glassy varnish. He also names the specific imitation centres, Yedo, Awata and Ota, and one imitator, Ko-zan of Ota, whose mark sits in a gourd-shaped cartouch.

The source page

Page 417 of Chaffers 1891, the source for this entry — Chaffers 1891, p.417 — public domain, from archive.org/details/marksmonogramson00chaf (leaf n436). Check the transcription against it.

What this entry does not establish

The province character says where, not who, and Chaffers does not tie it to a workshop or a date range.
Chaffers wrote while the imitation trade was active, so 'modern' here means late-nineteenth-century, not recent.
The Ko-zan gourd cartouch is described but not engraved on this page, so no plate for it is shown.