A JAPANESE IMARI BALUSTER VASE

Decorated with fans and ribbon-shaped panels variously enclosing floral designs, squirrels and vines, figures and landscapes; all reserved on a navy-blue ground with gilt.

Cf. Spink & Son, Far Eastern Art at Spink, Summer 1994, p. 57, no.64, for a related baluster vase from the Genroku Era. The authors explain that the ribbon-shaped cartouches imitate the decorative strips of paper known as tanzaku on which one would write a wish during the Tanabata festival.

See Japanese Works of Art, 1st July 2020, lot 218, for a pair of Imari vases from the collection of Lionel de Rothschild (1882-1942), Edmund de Rothschild (1916-2009), and the Trustees of Exbury House, with similar decoration sold in these rooms.