The simple, round form of this teapot is embellished with only a pair of nyoi staff-head motifs, one on each side. Two arched iron handles, parallel to each other, are hooked through holes in raised tabs at the front and back of the shoulders of the pot. The round lid is depressed so that an iron ring handle fastened with an iron clamp passing through the lid can lie flat inside the recessed area. The box is not original to the piece and has an inscription dated to 1960. The person who wrote it clearly admired Yohei III and his efforts to produce works that resembled Chinese ceramics. The inscription describes Yohei’s journey to perfecting these copies but misidentified the Chinese kiln whose wares were the basis for this particular work.
View the original at Cleveland Museum of Art →Japan implementing the 1970 UNESCO Convention. When a foreign state reports that cultural property has been stolen from an institution, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs notifies the education ministry, which designates the object as specified foreign cultural property, after consulting the trade ministry. Importing a designated object then requires approval under the foreign exchange and trade law.
The cool part. Article 6 quietly rewrites private law. Under the Civil Code a good-faith purchaser is normally secure against a recovery claim after two years. For designated stolen foreign cultural property, the victim may demand recovery from two years after the theft until ten years have passed. Buying in good faith does not settle the question for a decade, which is roughly how long it takes a stolen object to surface on a legitimate market.
Verify at e-Gov 法令検索 →Use it Palette for a single-colour run: one ink, heavy stock, nothing else on the sheet.
Description source: museum curator text — not generated