A large pair of Japanese Meiji Period Makuzu Kozan earthenwa...

Hammer

£8,500

A large pair of Japanese Meiji Period Makuzu Kozan earthenware vases, unusually depicting frogs with various implements sat within concave recesses to the main body, the tall tapered bodies finely gilt decorated, signed within a gourd to the underside by Makuzu Kozan. Circa 1890 period. 30 cm x 15 cm. Note: K?zan's period in Bizen had coincided with the political changes of the Meiji Restoration. In 1870 he set up a workshop in Yokohama, newly opened as a treaty port. He moved to the Kant? at the invitation of Umeda Hannosuke, a Tokyo merchant who was interested in exporting Satsuma ware. The deal involved Suzuki Yasubei, brother-in-law to Umeda, on the business side, and Suzuki helped finance the kiln. After a serious fire in 1876, K?zan rebuilt out of his own pocket, freeing himself from the partnership. After a few years, Suzuki was bankrupted, and K?zan then sold what he manufactured on his own account. At this time Yokohama still resembled the fishing village it had been, and there was no ceramic or even craft tradition. Suzuki found for K?zan a site (about 0.3 ha) in Nishi?ta (present-day Kanoedai in the central ward of Yokohama). The kiln built there took the name ?ta. The Kant? was also poor in suitable clay, and initially K?zan had to prospect widely for his materials. Bringing four apprentices from Kyoto, K?zan by 1872 had overcome the initial problems, and expanded his workshop with a large recruitment of local men and women. This was the period at which modern Satsuma ware was distressed for export as antique, and Pollard considers that, up to 1876 at least, there was truth in the allegation of Frank Brinkley that the Makuzu workshop participated in the fraudulent trade.[ Johannes Justus Rein visited the business in the mid-1870s.
The Meiji Restoration had brought about a collapse of the old regulation and financing of kilns. K?zan was at the forefront of the successor policy of industrial development, which included crafts, called shokusan k?gy?. He exhibited at the Centennial Exposition of 1876, in Philadelphia, a wide range of ceramic wares, including high relief vessels presaging later work.[11] In the aftermath, much attention was paid to Japanese ceramics for the next few years in Cincinnati, and the Japonisme reached the Rookwood Pottery Company. K?zan also showed much development of lines quite independent of the Satsuma ware at First National Industrial Exposition of 1877 in Tokyo. This exposition was where the Emperor touched a K?zan vase; a moment which made the artist famous. At the Paris Exposition Universelle of 1889, he won a gold medal for his yohen (transmutation) glazes. The 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicagowon an Honorary Gold Medal for the workshop for a pair of elaborate stoneware vases.
At the Exposition Universelle (1900) in Paris, Japanese ceramics in general did not fare well. K?zan was the only grand prix winner, for a pair of large stoneware vases and basin. The technically demanding manufacture was supported by the Ministry of Agriculture and Commerce. His other exhibits showed innovative design, and an appreciation of Western taste. He continued to experiment for the rest of his life, particularly with glazes, despite some health and money problems.
At the Japan-British Exhibition of 1910, a vase by K?zan was described as "a perfect piece both artistically and technically, very simple in line, and classic in shape, and quite artistic in the design of the matchless chrysanthemums, the pride of our country" In 1911, the Imperial family commissioned a vase as a gift for the King of the Belgians.