A SMALL JAPANESE CLOISONNE VASE BY NAMIKAWA YASUYUKI (1845-1927)

A SMALL JAPANESE CLOISONNE VASE BY NAMIKAWA YASUYUKI (1845-1927)
MEIJI ERA, C.1900-1910

The slender body delicately decorated with a design of flowering prunus branches, the delicate petals rendered in subtle shades of pink, in silver wires and polychrome enamels on the lustrous black ground; the rim and foot mounted with shakudō rings, the base with four chiselled cursive characters on a silver plaque reading as Kyoto Namikawa, 8cm.

Provenance: from an English private collection, London, purchased from Malcolm Fairley; illustrated and discussed in M Fairley, Japanese Enamels of the Meiji Era, 15-26 June 1998, p. 17, no.13. The author notes that the 'careful handling of the wire and the less crowded surface decoration point to a date in the early years of this [20th] century'.

Cf. J Earle, Meiji no Takara, Treasures of Imperial Japan, the D. Khalili Collection, Enamel, vol.III, no.28, for a related vase with similar decoration. Two other comparable vases are also listed in the collection of the Namikawa Cloisonné Museum of Kyoto.