Leached bamboo; free-style plaiting, wrapping

Signed Rōkansai saku (Made by Rōkansai)

Comes with its original fitted wood tomobako storage box inscribed outside Hanakago (Flower basket); titled by the artist on the reverse of the lid Mei Sōryū (Paired Dragons), signed Rōkansai and with a tripartite seal Rō, Kan, Sai; also with a handwritten label Rōkansai Sōryū hanakago (Rōkansai Paired Dragon Flower Basket)

Perhaps the most creative and influential Japanese bamboo artist of all time, Iizuka Rōkansai was born in Tochigi Prefecture the sixth and youngest son of Iizuka Hōsai I and began his training under his father at the age of 12. In his teenage years he briefly aspired to become a painter, but around the time of the family’s move to Tokyo in 1910 he resolved to make it his life’s mission to raise basketry to a higher level of creativity and refinement, immersing himself in the study of Chinese and Japanese literature as well as calligraphy and other aspects of traditional Japanese and contemporary Western art. By the mid-1910s he was accomplished enough to work on pieces that would be signed for many years by his eldest brother and teacher, Hōsai II.

In 1937 Rōkansai, already established as a leader in the craft world, a teacher, and a spokesman for bamboo art, published an article in which he categorized his practice in a similar way to calligraphy or flower-arrangement, as either shin (formal), gyō (semiformal), or sō (informal). A sō basket, he wrote

goes one step further in dispensing with regularity … the intersections of the weave appear totally disordered. The lines within it mostly “float” over multiple opposite strips of weave and different thicknesses of strips are combined in an irregular manner. With regard to form, too, the sō basket’s lines appear distorted: Its handle may be placed at three-tenths of the height or length of the basket … It doesn’t even matter if the sō basket’s base won’t balance on the ground, so that it rolls about when placed on the floor. If an otoshi (water container) is placed inside it, its weight may cause the basket to tilt in a particular way; alternatively, the basket may hold steady. It is a thing of complete freedom …

Rōkansai would produce many variants on this form, with a range of different titles, throughout his career: sometimes with no handle, sometimes with a much simpler handle, sometimes made from dark, smoked bamboo instead of leached white bamboo, always avoiding any sense of being bound by rigid rules or processes but still retaining a controlled elegance that is the essence of Japanese bamboo art.

The storage basket accompanying this basket bears a three-part seal that the artist appears to have used between the years 1927 and 1934.