Jar

Now dated to the nineteenth century, this jar, with extensive red lacquer repairs, came to Freer from Paris-based dealer Siegfried Bing. He believed it to be a Korean antique, while the ceramics expert Edward Sylvester Morse although it was Tamba ware from Japan. Both men regarded this as an "important specimen," as Freer described it; Morse echoed this sentiment: "Very extraordinary specimen," he noted in 1921. The piece has puzzled subsequent scholars, who have been uncertain about its geographic origins, but sure that it was not the ancient vessel that Freer and his contemporaries believed it to be. It may be an example of a fake antique, produced specifically for an international market.