AN EARTHENWARE VESSEL WITH SCULPTURAL RIM

Based on the most recent scientific research, it is believed that the manufacturing of the Jomon vessels started around 15,000 BCE. For over ten thousand years, the potters made jomon (rope-decorated) vessels. An early obsession with surface decoration, much of it made by rolling a piece of rope across the soft clay surface, turned in time into an amazing array of sculptural additions to the hand-built body of the pot.
For other earthenware vessels from Jomon period in the Avery Brundage Collection at the Asian Art Museum, San Francisco, see Yoshiko Kakudo, ed., The Art of Japan, Masterworks in the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco (San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1991), pls. 3 and 4.