Bronze vase 'Bamboo' by Katori HOZUMA

Important both as a scholar and as a practitioner, Katori Hotsuma (sometimes Hozuma) was a key figure in the twentieth-century history of Japanese metalwork. A graduate of Tokyo Art School, where he also taught from 1903 to 1943, he won his first international award at the Paris Exposition Universelle of 1900 and helped set up several metalwork study groups and art associations; from 1934 he served as a judge at the Teiten annual national exhibitions, where he regularly showed his work (see Kendall H. Brown, Deco Japan: Shaping Art and Culture, 1920-1945, exhibition catalogue, Alexandria, Va., Art Services International, 2012, p. 156).