Thomsen Gallery exhibits a group of Japanese bamboo baskets by the greatest masters from the first half of the twentieth century, regarded as the Golden Age of Japanese basketry, along with a selection of works by established contemporary makers.
A selection of Japan’s impressive medieval ceramic storage jars will offer a strong aesthetic contrast to the baskets. Hand-built with uneven, sculpted profiles and grainy, tactile surfaces animated with accidental streaks and pools of glaze produced by flying wood ash during long firing at very high temperatures, these anonymous wares were first appreciated by Japanese tea masters over 400 years ago for their wabi-sabi (rustic, unassuming, transient, incomplete) appearance. Rediscovered by curators and collectors in recent decades, they are admired today for formal and textural qualities that appeal strongly to contemporary tastes.