THE FAR EAST AND ISLAM

The far east
The basis for the East Asian collection was laid by the Museum’s founder Justus Brinckmann. In 1883 he began, in consultation with the Paris-based art dealers Hayashi Tadamasa and Siegfried Bing, to build up a collection of Japanese items. By the beginning of the 20th Century the Museum was already in possession of an extensive collection of Japanese objects: c. 2.000 sword decorations (principally tsuba), which are among the best outside Japan today, ceramics, high-quality lacquerwork from the 15th to the 19th Century: coloured woodcuts, including celebrated works by Hokusai and Hiroshige from the Collection Goncourt, 400 illustrated woodcut books, colouring stencil plates, a large collection of intricately woven baskets from Kyôto, small objets d’art such as netsuke and medicine receptacles (inrô) as well as several picture scrolls and some robes from the Nô theatre.
In the Twenties and Thirties the emphasis in making purchases shifted to Chinese art. China continued to be the main focus in the Fifties, too, especially bronzes and porcelain objects. The donation to the Museum of Philipp F. Reemtsma’s China Collection by his son Prof. Dr. Jan Philipp Reemtsma in 1996 represented a major addition. This comprises 350 Chinese items made of bronze, stoneware, porcelain, jade and glass from periods ranging from 1500 B.C. up to the 18th Century. The collection has been further augmented since the Sixties by important works of Japanese painting and Buddhist sculpture among other items. The Urasenke Foundation in Kyôto gave the Museum a tea-house in 1977. The tea ceremony has been held once a month since then. The Japanese tea ceremony is celebrated by a tea master of the Urasenke. The adjacent exhibition rooms show ceramics used in the drinking of tea from the late 16th to the 19th Century.