Tray

Location: Japan, Tokyo

Materials: cloisonné, musen and yusen enamel, applied with a shakudo rim

Dimensions: 30.8 x 26 cm

Accession Number: E 37

Other Notes:

A cloisonné enamel tray of rounded rectangular form decorated in Rimpa style with a flowering prunus-stem growing from a gnarled tree-stump, a partially cloud-obscured moon in the background on a pale grey ground. The flowers are worked in musen and yusen techniques in varying tones of grey and white. Applied with a shakudo rim. The reverse scattered with numerous gilt wire flowers in tones of brown on a dark plum-coloured ground. Inscribed with the seal ‘Korin’.

Almost certainly Sosuke was working from a sketch attributed to or a print after the great Rimpa artist Ogata Korin (1658-1716). The technique of dripping wet paint on to wet paint (tarashikomi), typical of the Rimpa artists, is here brilliantly imitated in musen.

Bibliography:

O. Impey, M. Fairley (eds.), Meiji No Takara: Treasures Of Imperial Japan: Enamel, London 1994, cat. 103.
J. Earle, Splendors of Imperial Japan: Arts of the Meiji period from the Khalili Collection, London 2002, cat. 219, pp. 310–11.