Carved Lacquer Bowl 'Glistening Flower' by Shozo KITAOKA

A large, boldly facetted bowl that opens like a flower head, its rim gathered into narrow petal-like lobes. The carved lacquer (choshitsu) build-up runs from pale beige at the surface through green to a deep blue at its lowest point, giving the interior a layered, almost gradient glow that follows the ribbing down toward the centre. The mottled, speckled quality within each coloured band, rather than a clean, uniform layering, comes from tatakinuri: an irregular ground coat struck with a sponge or cloth before the contrasting top layer is applied and then ground back, letting both colours surface unevenly. The exterior is left in a plain, dark polished lacquer that sets off the coloured interior. The gloss is high enough to read as porcelain rather than lacquer at a glance, and the scale and finish argue for a display object rather than a bowl meant for use. Signed Sho.

KITAOKA Shozo (born 1949, Takamatsu) is a specialist in choshitsu (carved lacquer), the technique long associated with the Kagawa lacquer tradition, where he has served as a full-time instructor at the Kagawa Prefectural Lacquer Art Research Institute. Within choshitsu, he developed tatakinuri, a struck-ground layering method that produces a mottled, spontaneous colour effect in place of the technique's traditional clean-banded gradations, the method used in this bowl. He is associated with the circle of Living National Treasure Otomaru Kodo (1898–1997): in 2001 he was named, alongside two of Otomaru's documented pupils, a holder of Kagawa Prefecture's Intangible Cultural Property designation for choshitsu, and in 2018 he contributed a personal memorial essay, "Thoughts on Otomaru-sensei," to the Takamatsu Art Museum's Otomaru Kodo retrospective catalogue.