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Kidney-shaped tray with two pigeons
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Details
- Associated place
- Date
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c. 1880
Meiji Period (1868 - 1912)
- Artist/maker
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Namikawa Sōsuke (1847 - 1910) (designer)after Watanabe Seitei (1851 - 1918) (designer)Tōkyō Cloisonné Company (1871 - c. 1910) (manufacturer)
- Material and technique
- copper, inlaid with gold and silver wire cloisonné enamel
- Dimensions
- 24.5 x 30 x 1.8 cm max. (height x width x depth)
- Material index
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processed material › metal › gold,
- Technique index
- Object type index
- No. of items
- 1
- Credit line
- Purchased with the assistance of the Story Fund, 1990.
- Accession no.
- EA1990.4
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Further reading
Impey, Oliver, and Joyce Seaman, Japanese Decorative Arts of the Meiji Period 1868-1912, Ashmolean Handbooks (Oxford: Ashmolean Museum, 2005), no. 47 on p. 98, pp. 8, 62, & 92, illus. pp. 98-99
Impey, Oliver, ‘Reflections upon the Arts and Crafts of Meiji Period Japan with Reference to the Collection of the Ashmolean Museum’, Oriental Art, 42/3, (Autumn 1996), p. 16, illus. p. 16 fig. 16
Glossary
cloisonné
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cloisonné
Decorative technique in which wires are attached to a metal body and coloured enamels are applied between the wires.
Location
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- currently in research collection
Objects are sometimes moved to a different location. Our object location data is usually updated on a monthly basis. Contact the Jameel Study Centre if you are planning to visit the museum to see a particular object on display, or would like to arrange an appointment to see an object in our reserve collections.
Publications online
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Japanese Decorative Arts of the Meiji Period
Kidney-shaped tray with two pigeons in grey and white on a grey to beige ground. The reverse in matt brown enamel with various roundels. Silver and gold wire. The tray with the seal mark of Sōsuke on the reverse; the image signed: Seitei with kakihan.
The gradation of the coloured background was a feature much used by Sōsuke, in his desire to imitate painting. He had seen that his work was exhibited under the heading 'Fine art' in such exhibitions as the Japan-British in 1910, whereas that of his rivals, Namikawa Yasuyuki, Andō Jūbei and others who made no such attempt, were exhibited under 'Crafts'. This was a concept new to Japan, and new words had to be coined to express the concept, but it nevertheless satisfied some sort of desire for distinction in Sōsuke.
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