Dry Lacquer Lobed Bowl after a Shosoin Original

A deep, rounded kanshitsu bowl, its walls divided into crisply ridged lobes that rise to a cusped, flower-shaped rim edged with a fine gilt-toned line. The surface is finished in a metallic grey lacquer that convincingly imitates aged metal. In the interior well and on the recessed lobed base it is deliberately left rough, pitted and finely crackled, recalling the corroded surface of an excavated metal vessel. The form follows a Nara-period metal bowl in the Shosoin repository, a model much admired by 20th-century lacquer artists. With fitted tomobako bearing an inscribed paper label, a branded studio mark and two seals.

Compare:

• AKAJI Yusai (1906–1984), Eight-Lobed Covered Box with Petal-Shaped Small Containers after the Shosoin Treasure, 1979, Yokohama Museum of Art, inv. no. 85-CJ-002

• MASUMURA Kiichiro (b. 1941), Flower-Shaped Kanshitsu Bowls, "Red and Black", 1982, National Crafts Museum, Kanazawa, inv. no. Lc0128

Condition: Very good; a small chip to one exterior rib exposing the core, and minor surface marks.