Rectangular Vase with Crested Kingfishers
Ca 2000, Japan
Porcelain with underglaze blue, color enamels and gold
Size: 19¾ x 3¾ x 3¾ in. (49.5 x 9.5 x 9.5 cm)
Pine Saplings and Wagtail
Circa 1930, Japan
Pair of two-panel folding screens; mineral pigments and shell powder on paper with gold leaf
Size each screen: 67¼ x 70¼ in. (171 x 178.5 cm)
Signed underneath with incised characters: Shōunsai kore o tsukuru (This was made by Shōunsai)
Comes with a fitted wood tomobako storage box inscribed outside: Kikkō-ami hanakago (flower basket in hexagonal plaiting); signed inside: Shōunsai tsukuru (Made by Shōunsai); seal Shōunsai
Garden Scene
1930s, Japan
Two-panel folding screen; ink, mineral colors, and shell powder on silk
60¼ x 61¾ in. (153 x 157 cm)
Kamakura Kokyo here depicts the shady corner of a hillside garden nestled in the lower slopes of the mountains that surround much of his native Shiga Prefecture. The composition is anchored by a stone basin located toward the bottom of the left-hand panel, used by visitors to wash their hands, perhaps just before entering a private tea room. A range of lush green hues, contrasted with the white blossoms of a woodland flower, suggest the cool moisture of an evening during the midsummer rainy season.
Born in Otsu, about ten miles from Kyoto on the shore of Lake Biwa, Kokyo was apprenticed to Yamamoto Shunkyo (1872–1933), another native of Shiga Prefecture native and famous for his landscape paintings not just of Japan but also of North America. Unlike his teacher, Kokyo did not travel far or take part in the Tokyo national exhibitions but instead remained in the Otsu area, in 1940 forming the Omi Bijutsujinkai, an association of eleven painters in Nihonga (neo-nativist) style.
Box with Shell Decoration, “Cherry-Blossom Banquet”
ca 1990, Japan
Maki-e gold lacquer and shell inlays on wood
5 x 12½ x 12 in. (13 x 32 x 30.6 cm)
A decorative box of unusual form, the body comprising a lid formed from seven pieces with a flat top, angled long sides and vertical short sides, and a container formed from five pieces with vertical sides and a wider base, the lid meeting the base in inrōbuta (flush-fitting) style; the decoration of the short sides executed in strips of abalone; the decoration of the long sides and top executed in gold, silver, and colored hiramaki-e and takamaki-e (low- and high-relief “sprinkled picture”) against gold hirame flakes on a black-lacquer ground, the flakes densely packed on the top but less so on the sides; the principal motifs leaves and flowering strands of weeping cherry; the interior and underside plain black lacquer.
Comes with the original fitted wooden tomobako box inscribed outside Yōgai kazaribako Sakura no en (Box with shell decoration, “Cherry-Blossom Banquet”); signed and sealed inside Shun; tomogire wrapping cloth sealed Shun; printed artist résumé with final date of 1990.
A leading figure in the world of Kyoto art crafts, like some of his contemporaries Hattori Shunshō based his mature style on a unique combination of two major constituents within the traditions of East Asian lacquer. The first was his native city’s distinctive maki-e (“sprinkled picture”) technique, using finely powdered precious metals sprinkled onto still-damp lacquer to create pictorial designs. The second, especially during his latter decades, was the raden technique of shell inlay, historically practiced not only in Japan but also in China, Korea, and the Ryukyu Islands (present-day Okinawa). Bold, sometimes semi-abstract shell inlay is a noted feature of lacquer works in the Rinpa decorative style that flourished in Kyoto from the seventeenth century and although Hattori’s approach to the material was very much his own, it contributed to the “Neo-Rimpa” appearance of many of his later works. Like other twentieth-century Japanese artists, he favored the gleaming, lustrous, and very thinly cut shell used here—known generically as yōgai (abalone)—which he imported from Mexico and New Zealand.
Born in 1943, from 1963 Hattori exhibited frequently at the Nitten national exhibition and the Kyoto Craft Art exhibition, winning many prizes at both events. In 1975 he was selected by the Bunkachō (Agency for Cultural Affairs) to undertake a tour of Europe and the United States, studying etching in Sweden, working in Paris with the British surrealist Stanley William Hayter, and attending workshops in New York. In 1995 he was granted an audience by His Holiness Pope John Paul II, to whom he presented a lacquered lectern. He exhibited in the Netherlands, New York, and South Korea, and in 2005 was commissioned to create furniture for the Imperial Guest House in Kyoto.
Toward the end of his long career Hattori developed a semi-pictorial manner, depicting subjects such as views of Patras Harbor in Greece, sunlight reflected on water or, as here, radical reworkings of traditional Japanese themes such as flowering cherry blossom. Here Hattori evokes the joyful spirit of the annual hanami (cherry-blossom viewing) season, emphasizing the classical origins of the flower as both a literary and a pictorial motif by choosing to name his work Hana no en (A Banquet Celebrating Cherry Blossoms), the title of Chapter 8 of the world-famous eleventh-century novel Genji monogatari. The chapter relates how the young Prince Genji (aged twenty) meets a lover during a cherry-blossom banquet at the palace. The banquet takes places at night, evoked here by the box’s black background and interior, while the bold shell design perhaps suggests the brightness of the moon or palace lanterns.
Tiered Accessory Box with Cormorant and Fish
1933, Japan
Maki-e lacquer on wood with silver rims
8¾ x 11¼ x 8¾ in. (22.5 x 28.5 x 22.5 cm)
A tiered box comprising of a suzuribako (box for traditional writing utensils), a box for paper and a lid, the three fitting together in inrōbuta (flush-fitting) style, with rounded corners, chiri-i (edges) and pewter rims; the decoration executed in multi-colored lacquer, the surface divided on the sides into 49 or 63 squares and on the top into 63 squares, each containing a pattern of concentric rings, superimposed on the top by a single cormorant in flight diving toward stylized fish and seaweed superimposed on the sides; the interiors in black lacquer sprinkled with gold and silver hirame flakes; the suzuribako fitted with fude-oki (brush tray), suzuri (ink stone), and metal suiteki (water dropper) in the form of a tea kettle with a swing handle and removable lid.
Comes with the original fitted paulownia-wood tomobako storage box inscribed outside U to uo jūtebako (Tiered accessory box with cormorant and fish); dated inside to October 1933 and signed with a seal.
Exhibited:
Fourteenth Teiten Exhibition, Tokyo, 1933
Published:
Nittenshi Hensan Iinkai (Nittenshi Editorial Committee), Nittenshi 11 (History of the National Salon 11), Teiten hen 6 (The Teiten Exhibition 6), Tokyo, Nitten, 1983, no. 53.
February 20 – 23, 2025
Former Klinik Gut
Via Arona, 34, 7500 St. Moritz
We are delighted to announce our participation this week in NOMAD St. Moritz, the international art fair for collectible design and contemporary art.
Taking place at the Former Klinik Gut in St. Moritz, Switzerland, our exhibition offers a selection of ceramic works by various renowned Japanese artist, among whom Sueharu Fukami and Takegoshi Jun, maki-e gold lacquer boxes, and Japanese bamboo ikebana baskets by the great masters such as Iizuka Rōkansai.
Should you be in the area, we would be delighted to see you in Room F4 of the Former Klinik Gut.
Thomsen gallery, located in a townhouse on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, offers important Japanese paintings and works of art to collectors and museums worldwide. The gallery specializes in Japanese screens and scrolls; in early Japanese tea ceramics from the medieval through the Edo periods; in masterpieces of ikebana bamboo baskets; and in gold lacquer objects. It further specializes in post-war ink art and Gutai art as well as contemporary art by select artists, such as the internationally renowned Japanese ceramic artist Sueharu Fukami, the paper artist Kyoko Ibe, and the lacquer artist Yoshio Okada.
The gallery is owned by Erik and Cornelia Thomsen, who live and work in New York. Erik has been a dealer in Japanese art since 1981; born to Danish parents and raised in Japan, he is fluent in Japanese and was the first foreigner to apprentice to an art dealer in Japan. They have three children, Julia, Anna, and Georg.
