Noritake Porcelain: It Won’t Be Affordable Forever

Have you noticed that the level of snobbery towards porcelain produced in Japan is starting to dramatically fall?

In fact, Japanese porcelain from the middle of the 20th Century (stuff that would be called ‘retro’, I suppose) is becoming fairly collectable. And the more kitschy it is, the more people love it. Figurines produced in Japan, especially during the 1960s – long, lean cats, roly-poly puppies and birds with big eyes, all of them in wild primary colours – are selling at Chapel Street Bazaar et al for quite the pretty penny.

All of this brings me to a Somewhat Risky Observation – it appears that more conservative/useful/early Japanese porcelain is starting to increase in value as well.

It used to be the case that if porcelain wasn’t British or European (unless it was very old or had something else peculiar to recommend it), you could pick it up for a song. But now – in much the same way Australian pottery is growing in popularity – Japanese porcelain is starting to make its way out of the bargain bin and into antiques fairs and centres.

All of this brings me to a brief discussion of a company is probably the best known producer Japanese porcelain producer – Noritake.

Noritake grew out of a trading company (Morimura Brothers) that was founded in New York in 1876. The company known today as ‘Noritake’, however, was established in 1904 under the name ‘Nippon Toki Gomei Kaisha’ (which can be roughly translated as ‘the company that makes Japan’s best/finest China’). The first factory was constructed in the town of Noritake, Nagoya, Japan. Obviously, this is where the company got its name from, but the name of the company wasn’t officially ‘Noritake’ until 1981, when it was deemed that the company was important enough to register the name of a town as its trading name. 

Noritake was founded to supply the US market with high quality Japanese porcelain. Initially, all Noritake porcelain was marked with the words ‘Hand Painted Nippon’, to comply with US regulations that required companies importing goods into the US to include the name of the country of origin on the items being imported. Thus, early Noritake is referred to as ‘Nippon era’ and dates from 1868 – 1921. After this it featured the word ‘Japan’ on its backmarks (as the US decided that the term ‘nippon’ wasn’t acceptable, as it might not be a clear enough indication that the porcelain was Japanese). It’s estimated that the company, in all its various forms, has used around 400 different backmarks in total. 

In the early 20s, Noritake introduced assembly line techniques and grew extremely quickly both in size and fame. An Australian arm of the company (called simply Noritake Australia) was founded in 1957.

Noritake is still alive and kicking – you can buy its recent designs at places like Myer and Bevilles. But the older ones (IMHO) have more charm.

So why am I telling you all of this? Because compared to other art deco/early twentieth century porcelains, most early Noritake is still relatively affordable. Some of the more common designs probably aren’t worth your while, but many of the more decorative 20s and 30s items look great and employ the typical sharp angles and drama of deco designs.

If the surge in popularity of other, more recent Japanese porcelain is anything to go by, it might not be so affordable for much longer. So if you’re looking to start collecting a decent 20th century porcelain but think it’s too expensive, a bit of ‘Hand Painted Nippon’ might be just the ticket.

P.S. To learn more about Noritake, especially from an Australian perspective, I highly recommend the Noritake Collectors Guild website, especially as it has an amazing library of marks used by the company.