Hayakawa Shōkosai III
Bag-Shaped Handled Flower Basket in Mizore Plaiting, March 1915
Bamboo
H 15¾ x 10 x 9½ in. (40 x 25.5 x 24.5 cm)
T-5058
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Plaited from shichiku bamboo (also kurochiku), with mottled purplish-black stems; double asanoha hexagonal plaiting and twining (base), mizore free-style diagonal plaiting over horizontal elements, wrapping. Signed underneath with incised characters:...
Plaited from shichiku bamboo (also kurochiku), with mottled purplish-black stems; double asanoha hexagonal plaiting and twining (base), mizore free-style diagonal plaiting over horizontal elements, wrapping. Signed underneath with incised characters: Sansei Shōkosai tsukuru (Made by Shōkosai III)
Comes with the original fitted double wooden tomobako storage boxes, the inner box inscribed outside: Teiryō fukurogata hanakago shichiku sei (Bag-Shaped Handled Flower Basket Made from Shichiku Bamboo); signed inside: Taishō kinoto-u shunban Sansei Shōkosai tsukuru (Made by Shōkosai III in March 1915); sealed Sansei Shōkosai (Shōkosai III)
Born the fifth son of Hayakawa Shōkosai I—a seminal figure in the development of bamboo art in Japan’s Kansai region—Hayakawa Shōkosai III initially worked under the name Shōsai during a brief but formative period in Tokyo, where he immersed himself in the city’s vibrant artistic life and cultivated a cosmopolitan and refined aesthetic sensibility, mastering not only the intricate techniques of bamboo basketry but also calligraphy, painting, and the bamboo flute. These disciplines enriched his artistic vocabulary and shaped his vision for bamboo as a medium of expressive art.
His career changed dramatically in 1905, when the early death of his elder brother compelled him to return to Sakai (part of present-day greater Osaka) and assume leadership of the family atelierNow the torchbearer of a distinguished lineage, he was not content to merely replicate the past. While his father’s practice, although highly innovative, had mostly centered on tightly plaited basketry in the Chinese style, Shōkosai II sought to expand the potential of bamboo, pioneering a new aesthetic approach.
One of his key innovations was a spontaneous, looser plaiting style, widely known as ara-ami (rough or wild plaiting) but in the specific case of the Hayakawa lineage often described as mizore (sleet), a term that perfectly captures the seemingly random, mobile, irregular effects visible especially in the upper registers of this outstanding basket from the artist’s middle period. As Shōkosai III’s career developed, his work showed signs of increasing freedom, seen here not just in the dynamism of the plaiting but also in the slightly irregular overall shape of both basket and handle and the looser wrapping of the rim, as aesthetically important in a bamboo flower basket as it is in a ceramic tea bowl.
Comes with the original fitted double wooden tomobako storage boxes, the inner box inscribed outside: Teiryō fukurogata hanakago shichiku sei (Bag-Shaped Handled Flower Basket Made from Shichiku Bamboo); signed inside: Taishō kinoto-u shunban Sansei Shōkosai tsukuru (Made by Shōkosai III in March 1915); sealed Sansei Shōkosai (Shōkosai III)
Born the fifth son of Hayakawa Shōkosai I—a seminal figure in the development of bamboo art in Japan’s Kansai region—Hayakawa Shōkosai III initially worked under the name Shōsai during a brief but formative period in Tokyo, where he immersed himself in the city’s vibrant artistic life and cultivated a cosmopolitan and refined aesthetic sensibility, mastering not only the intricate techniques of bamboo basketry but also calligraphy, painting, and the bamboo flute. These disciplines enriched his artistic vocabulary and shaped his vision for bamboo as a medium of expressive art.
His career changed dramatically in 1905, when the early death of his elder brother compelled him to return to Sakai (part of present-day greater Osaka) and assume leadership of the family atelierNow the torchbearer of a distinguished lineage, he was not content to merely replicate the past. While his father’s practice, although highly innovative, had mostly centered on tightly plaited basketry in the Chinese style, Shōkosai II sought to expand the potential of bamboo, pioneering a new aesthetic approach.
One of his key innovations was a spontaneous, looser plaiting style, widely known as ara-ami (rough or wild plaiting) but in the specific case of the Hayakawa lineage often described as mizore (sleet), a term that perfectly captures the seemingly random, mobile, irregular effects visible especially in the upper registers of this outstanding basket from the artist’s middle period. As Shōkosai III’s career developed, his work showed signs of increasing freedom, seen here not just in the dynamism of the plaiting but also in the slightly irregular overall shape of both basket and handle and the looser wrapping of the rim, as aesthetically important in a bamboo flower basket as it is in a ceramic tea bowl.