Antiques July 4 2009.

I am always impressed by the eye people have for objects. The ability to see the obvious that everyone else is missing.

The bowl that has had the repair doesn’t seem to fall into that set but on further thought I put it there. I have seen this bowl a number of times in the past. I didn’t particularly like it. It was an average bowl dating back 400 years or so. A lot of collectors won’t agree with me but I find it a little too “shibui” in a way I can’t relate.

I have pictures of it pre-repair. I think it is much nicer after it has been purposefully broken and repaired using a shard from the Heijo complex and what looks like gold leaf. I imagine this is sacrilegious to some but to me it has made the bowl. I am now very interested in looking at it and learning more about it.

In a play on “a chip off the old block” the entry from the book talks about the father of the dealer doing the same thing with a bowl I had pictures of a couple of weeks ago. The “daibutsu” chawan. The entry shows the bowl that has been chipped in the same way and repaired by none other than Mr. Kawase, the father of the Mr. Kawase I was talking to.

The last picture is from a book that is on the tea utensil collection of a famous tea practitioner here. I have started recording these study sessions. I did my second recording last week so am somewhat new to the whole process. Instead of pushing “record” I apparently pushed “play”. That is the reason for the lack of detail this week. I didn’t take many notes, instead relaxing a little in the knowledge technology was taking care of me. Smart bombs, dumb people.

Looking at the book I had an “aha” moment. It had pictures of tea rooms and separate pictures of the tea utensil sets. I finally got it.  I am going to gather a complete set of utensils and start to try the ceremony. I will build a tea room in a damp dark corner of my land and see if it will improve my tea bowl making.

Picture of the bowl the dealer had “fixed”.

The insert shard is from the Heijo temple complex.

Picture from a book of the bowl done by the dealers father.

Entry in the book talking about the dealers father. The other pictures are of the same entry.

Sen no Rikyu, Omotesenke, Urasenke and others signatures.

These are from a massive book I looked at this weekend.

There are some doubles of pictures.

Omotesenke, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omotesenke the following pictures are the bottom of this page or a better picture.

Urasenke, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urasenke Same thing on the following pictures.

Musanokoji senke, I couldn’t find good overview references.

Yabuuchiryu and Enshuryu

Raku family imprints and signatures.

Antique Grand Fair Kyoto

Yesterday I took a rare trip on the Japanese trains. I only ride them once every two years or so now. When I first came to Japan I was on the train so much I studied and learned Japanese during my commuting here and there. We went to the Antique Grand Fair Kyoto. Billed in the Kansai Scene as the largest antique fair in Western Japan, 350 dealers of high repute ….. I can attest to at least one of the claims being wrong.

It was like a who’s who of the Wakakusakai auction I attend every month. I saw at least 20 dealers I see haggling every month over items on the block.

I saw a number of items I have bought at auction, researched and either sold or have here for sale. It was interesting  to see them in the “wild”, prices attached and be able to compare what value people see in them. I still have the first plate I bought at the Wakakusakai auction. By pure luck it turned out to 1) be genuine and 2) be a piece that is in a book on Imari. I saw a different piece from the same kiln at a dealers booth and was able to inquire about it. The piece I saw was selling for 450,000 yen. It is a little earlier than mine. The piece yesterday is from the 1700-1750 period, mine is from the 1750-1800 period. One telling clue is that mine has writing on it. The pieces with writing from that kiln are newer because the decorators were largely illiterate in the earlier period.

I asked a number of dealers about a piece I have now that I picked up for a very reasonable price. Sites in the U.S. have similar listed as 1900-1940 production pieces. Every dealer I asked said Meiji. Meiji runs from 1868-1912. So no one is really wrong but Meiji certainly sounds older.

Blunder of the day.

Luckily it wasn’t mine although I have made more than my fair share. I asked a dealer what type of ceramics a 3 bowl set were. He said Satsuma to which I said I would like to see the back, is it OK if I flip them over. I flipped them over and with out thinking read the back signature out loud, Kutani. Poor guy, being shown wrong by a foreigner no less.

I did meet a French dealer, selling only glass and bronze. He was very friendly and we talked for thirty minutes or more. He was upset at the Japanese dealers for doing something I have seen and thought was typical. Selling at 10% or so over   their purchase price. 10% profit.  He said the Europeans would NEVER lose money on a sale.  My advice to collectors. Buy now. The prices are extremely low and especially the Japanese are selling at prices that once they start rising won’t come back to this level for a very long time.

Antiques 6-14-09

The pictures are of a Kamakura period Gogo (long o) Shiyui Amida. See here or here.  There is a very good example of this type of statue housed at the Todaiji temple in Nara.

The gold leaf is applied by finger. The leaf is first cut into thin strips and then put into place using the tip of the finger. The condition is very good on this statue. The picture of the back shows a removable panel that would have contained a relic, sutra or something of that sort. These have usually been emptied.

Just to look at a little of the iconography. The hair, like Sai Baba’s, is a symbol of how long the Buddha has been meditating and the lack of concern for the material world. Meditated for 5 eons would be a rough translation of gogo shiyui. The meaning of “gogo shiyui” in Japanese is closer to limitless time. I would imagine sitting in the lotus for more than an hour qualifies as forever. During this period of meditation the Buddha’s focus was how to look out for the good of mankind. An interesting side note. When I was at the dealers looking and learning about this piece he didn’t use the terminology that is usually associated with this incarnation of Buddha. What the dealer said is the Gogo Shiyui Amida was given a problem to ponder and it took him a very long time to figure it out. That is the reason for the long hair. It may seem like a small difference but I see it as a far more personal and relate-able rendering of the story. In researching the piece in Japanese too I find the writing much more personal, less “object, observer” type of writing.  During the time he was meditating his hair grew long as it is represented in the statue.

I am unsure what the mustache means.

Million dollar Buddhas.

I went to the dealer with a friend who wanted to get some antiques looked at. The three of us walked in, my friend, my wife and I. There were two somewhat frumpy business men with a couple of printed pages in front of them, the Amida statue and the dealer. The first thing I heard was something to the tune of it won’t bring more than one million in this climate. I turned around and walked out to give them the time to negotiate in peace. After about ten minutes the men left and I left my crouching position across the narrow road from the shop, going back into the shop.  The story was the two men were representatives of a wealthy business man from Osaka who owned an Important Cultural Property Buddha statue and wanted to sell it for at least a couple of million dollars, or in Japanese suu oku en. My immediate thought was how much money does this dealer keep in reserve for these type of calls.

Antiques 6-6-09

The bowl pictured is a Hagi piece. Not what I usually expect when I think of Hagi ware. They were produced in number during the Genroku period. A similar one was given as a gift from a person named Mori Motonari to a temple in Hiroshima.   Those checking facts will see there is  about a hundred year gap from the time Mori Motonari died and the start of Hagi pottery so the bowl given by Mori Motonari would have been a prototype.  This particular bowl is called “Daibutsu Chawan”. The writing on the lid of the box was written by the head of temple with a  Daibutsu.  This fact adds about 100,000 yen to the price of the bowl.

In the early 20th. century these types of bowls were used as an auxiliary bowl for tea gatherings. When a large number of guests would attend a tea ceremony the host would put out 10 or so nice tea bowls and the rest would be served with a more pedestrian type of bowl. The bowl would have to be somewhat special but not so much so as to outshine the nicer bowls. That is where these types of bowls would come in to play. They are over 300 years old so they do have specialness in that way but the host would bring out 10 or so of them which would make the commonality of them more obvious. The elder Kawase owned about 20 of these bowls. Pre-war they were much more common. One could go into an antiques shop and buy them by the dozen. Now they are much more expensive. If one has one in a signed box it is very easy to sell them as they are so rare.

Often times the story behind a piece is as interesting as the piece. This bowl was owned by  Mr. Kawase, the father of the 86 year old  dealer I often go to to learn. The elder Mr. Kawase was born in Meiji 21, 1888.

He held a number of positions. He was on one of the committees that decided which pieces were given the designation of Important Cultural Property. In his day there were panels of 10 or so judges that would examine a piece and all 10 would have to agree for the piece to get the designation. He would often be the only dissenter. In one case related to me there were some pieces that came up that were from the  Shosoin (or here) repository. Mr. Kawase refused to certify one lacquer piece after everyone else had given the OK. The reason being that there were some repairs that made it more of  a hybrid than a pure example. I learned that even with the reputation that Shosoin enjoys here in Japan the store rooms are not in perfect order with many pieces having the lids mixed with other pieces or being in disaray in other ways.

I have included a couple of photocopies that pertain to the elder Mr. Kawase. One is an auction round up from a partial selling off of his sword collection.   The entry in the lower left shows a price of 1,680 yen for one sword. This is in an age when 1,000 yen would buy a house.  I have also included a page from a sword  exhibition catalog page. The exhibition was held after he died. Is shows a number of Important Cultural Property designated pieces. Actually the majority of the swords in  his collection held that designation.

Title page for sword auction catalog.

Title page for sword exhibition catalog.

Exhibition catalog page. Shows a number of important cultural property designated pieces.

Exhibition catalog page. Shows a number of important cultural property designated pieces.

Exhibition catalog page. Shows a number of important cultural property designated pieces.

Detail from sword auction results. This is in an age when 1,000 yen would buy a house. The entry in the lower left shows a price of 1,680 yen.

Detail. Exhibition catalog page. Shows a number of important cultural property designated pieces.

More sale results. Lower left entry shows sale price of 418 yen.

More prices. Lower left shows a sale price of 193 yen.

The elder Mr. Kawase.

Genroku era Hagi bowl.

Display in shop.

Antiques 5-31-09

A spoon for medicine. A curio other than the fact it is between 300-400 years old. Made from deer horn, in abundant supply in Nara. I didn’t learn much more about it. An interesting piece. It is large enough to make me think it is made more for herbal medicines.

The other set of pictures are general pictures of the tokonoma in Mr. Kawase’s shop. They illustrate a couple of points I hadn’t known about. The scroll dates from the Tempyo period.

If you put a hanging scroll that has lettering done in this style in a tokonoma , by tradition it should have a copper vase as a complement. I am unsure of the parameters of this. I think the writing in this scroll is of Buddhist scripture and this might be the limit of the rule. I have seen many cases of ceramic vases being used but mostly with scrolls with a different subject matter.. This might be a traditional precept that has fallen out of use.

Another point  illustrated by the pictures is the scroll. The background should make the scroll pop out. The contrast difference between the background and the letters should allow the letters to come forward, the background to fall to the back.

Antiques 5-24-09

Mr. Kawase is the dealer I go to every week to learn about antiques. He is 86 years old. I have a picture of him in the set below.Today I heard a lot of stories about  Mr. Kawase’s father.

He, the father, was a very wealthy man. He made money in Osaka in business selling fabric. He also collected  swords of which he had roughly 700 at any time. He later traded them all for tea bowls and became a well known tea practitioner with a listing in the “Who’s Who” of tea.

He decided to build a house in Nara to practice the tea ceremony out of. At the time he was living in Osaka. He came out to Nara and retained the best of everything. Carpenters, wall plasters, roofers, gardeners, etc. He also set about getting very nice wood for trimmings. Wood from old temples etc. As he lived in Osaka he was only able to come out to check on the house every couple of weeks. He came out one time to find the carpenters warming themselves over a fire made from the wood he had paid so much for.  That house has since become an Important Cultural Property and is lived in by Mr. Kawase.

He also had a home in the Gion area of Kyoto, an area known  for “evening” entertainment. His wife wanted to stay informed of what he was doing on his outings so she paid the house keeper to tell her if he brought a geisha home. On one occasion the house keeper called to say although he had brought home a geisha there was no need to worry about him having an affair as he had come home with 15 geisha, far too many to be worried about.

The father also knew the film maker Akira Kurosawa. On the first meeting Kurosawa came to the Kawase home. Upon seeing  the father’s face he said, ‘I have found him.’ To which Mr. Kawase replied gruffly, ‘Found what?’ ‘The face of the bushi.’ or samurai. Kurosawa wanted to cast him in a movie but Mr. Kawase dismissed the idea out of hand as below him.

I have lived in Nara since I came to Japan 15 years ago. I did live for a brief time in Osaka but the rest of the time in Nara. I have always heard the Nara people are very stingy with their money. They have a lot but don’t like to spend it on frivolous things.  Compare that  to the reputation of the Japanese in Nagoya. In Nagoya the reputation is that of Japanese that like to show how much money they have by having flashy items. I have often heard the flashier the gate is in front of a Nagoya home the more rundown the inside will be. People passing by can’t see the inside so no money is spent there. In contrast in Nara the money is spent on the inside of the home.

I asked Mr. Kawase how he gets around when his wife travels.  He said by bus. He then reached into his pocket and pulled out his wallet. Behind the twenty or so 10,000 yen bills he proudly showed me his free bus pass. When you pass the 80 year mark Nara city lets you ride the bus for free. 70 years and you only pay 100 yen. Now this is a man that gets driven around in a Mercedes Benz and lives in a house that is an Important Cultural Property. He also showed me his card that allows him free admission to any public museum in the country. He got it because he lends so many pieces to museums in Japan. He said one museum has had a piece for about 45 years that is his.

The pictures below are of a piece that is similar to one I saw recently. It is from the late Nara period, 724-794 in the Tempyo style. It is called a jyohei. Used to hold clean water in rituals.  The “joke” is that most of these jyohei are listed as one of a kind. That is jyohei made in Japan are listed in catalogs as being the only  one of its  kind in existence. This is the second one Mr. Kawase has bought this month. That isn’t to say they aren’t rare. Just obviously not one of a kind. The Japanese modeled them after the Chinese ones they had seen.

The other pictures are of Mr. Kawase and  a newspaper. The interesting thing about the newspaper is it had a story about baseball using a word for it I have never seen. Now base ball is called ‘puro yakyu’.  In the picture is is called ’shokugyo yakyu’.

Newspaper from Showa 12 or 1938

Antiques 5-16-09 and another one that got away.

One of the games I play at the auctions I go to is to try to find pieces that are from the Kamakura or Momoyama period.  Here is another one that got away. I am talking about the first pictures in the set below. I did look at this piece a number of times as it and I made our way around the room but decided it was a newer piece although I did place it as from  Tokoname. I just thought it looked far younger than its 700 years. So much for flattery. It went for a price well within my budget although that is probably because most people missed it. The photos from the book is of a typical Kamakura period Tokoname vase. The base is usually more rounded. This one that came up for auction has been cut off  far higher than usual giving it a flatter appearance.

During the last Wakakusa Auction I had a number of opportunities to bid on objects, none of which went smoothly. I have decided to focus on only those pieces that I really like, not on ones that I think I can sell. To see how good I am at picking things that sell well I only have to look at all the unsold things around me. What I very quickly discovered this last time is most of the pieces I like shot right out of my price range.  The first item I bid  on was a Meiji period lamp shade. My wife loves glass and she really wanted it. It went up on the block and the opening bid was 15,000 yen to which I replied “Hai”. The auctioneer then repeated the 15,ooo opener to which I repeated my “Hai” , a little louder, to no avail. The auctioneer said he heard a lot of “Hai’s”, but didn’t acknowledge me. The third call had me bending over the big guys that sit on either side of him and practically yelling my “Hai”, to which he then took the lamp shade off the block saying the minimum bid hadn’t been met. Confused r me. I then realized the opening bid is only a base and the first bid should be higher unless the object is going for what ever it can get as opposed to a predetermined minimum price. The person putting the lot up would be the one to determine the minimum price. This cutting analysis on my part led to the next fiasco.

I next bid on a copper hibachi. The bidding started out too high but quickly dropped down to what I thought was a very reasonable price. Having learned that the first price should be met and increased at least a little I then extended four fingers, 4,000 yen, and in the several nano seconds it took me to raise my hand the bidding had gone from a minimum of 3,000 yen down to “Doesn’t anyone even want to give 1,000 yen for this” just as my fingers came up. So I blurted out 3,000 yen holding out four fingers. Do you know how hard it is to lower a finger? The auctioneer only heard my voice, didn’t see my fingers but the guy on his right did see my fingers and helpfully blurted out 4,000 yen on my behalf. Holding my half eaten banana in one hand, my three and a half fingers still extended in my other I did get it for 3,000 but only after a good laugh from everyone.

I did unsuccessfully try to bid on a couple of other lots but all in all it was a comedy routine.

The five plate set that I saw on my weekly Saturday study session are very interesting.  Shino Oribe. Momoyama period. They are repaired in a way called “yobitsugi” I think the characters are yobi which means to invite or call and tsugi which means  to patch. I am fitting the meanings to match this particular usage. Yobi and tsugi have a number of meanings.

The area being repaired is an area that was damaged as the piece came out of the kiln. So these plates came out of the kiln with kiln damage. They were then repaired with pieces of plates from completely different plates. I find them very beautiful. This way of repairing by using completely unrelated work as an infill shows a very interesting side of the Japanese in my opinion. Maybe it is a common practice in other countries. It reminds me of a discussion I had about the way Japanese make signature seals. The person I was having the discussion with had primarily studied Chinese seals. He found the examples I presented infuriating in their lack of logic. I hadn’t picked out particularly esoteric examples, in fact I would say very run of the mill seals. But to him they completely lacked logic and couldn’t believe they were real.

The difference between this kind of plate and the mukotsuke or more specifically the yoseimuko (see last post) is mukotsuke are deeper, more like bowls. These plates are called “torisala”. Tori for take, sala for plate. They are intended to be used by an individual to hold single portions taken from a main serving dish. They are not a matching set but the term “mukotorisala” doesn’t seem to apply.

Some interesting points.

The feet are robust. As the work gets newer the feet get more delicate. These feet would be difficult to damage.  If I made plates that are this heavy or had this much weight concentrated in the feet I am pretty sure I would be staring at them for the next twenty years because no one would buy them.

The clay is very fine. The clay from the Momoyama era is extremely smooth and has a fine grain. It is difficult to find clay of this quality today.

Kamakura era Tokoname vase

Typical Kamakura era Tokoname vase

Shino Oribe set of plates.

Meiji Era glass bead lamp shade.

Necklace made from Meiji beads, available at my Etsy store, see link on blog.

Antiques 5-09-09

This is a Momoyama period Karatsu mukotsuke. It was originally part of a 5 piece set. There are a lot of complete sets to be had but there are far more incomplete sets around. Many, like this one,  have only one bowl left of the set. Because of this there is a term in Japanese that is “yoseimuko”. The “yosei” comes from a word meaning, in this case, to draw together, to bring together. The “muko” part, in this case, means bowl although the meaning is a little different. The word “yoseimuko” means to bring together 5 mukotsuke, or small plates,  to make a set or group.  Of course the set is a set of  what appear to be mismatched plates but in fact form a matched set. As I was learning about this plate I heard a story. The dealer and his father went to a tea gathering in Kobe. The dealer that was telling me the story is now 86 years old so the events in this story happened many years ago. At the tea party the father praised the person putting on the party on the quality of the yoseimuko he had put together. It was made up of 5 very rare and fine mukotsuke. The host replied with a laugh that he actually had the remaining 4 plates for each of the 5 in the set. The reason he had made a yosei set is he had had a particularly persnickety customer that day and had wanted to make him happy by showing him all five plates.

While I was looking at this bowl I was trying to see if I would recognize it as a genuine Momoyama piece. I do see the bottom in all aspects as genuine but the top would throw me. The top doesn’t have the feel I would expect. Lacking in depth, the iron decoration appears newer than I would expect. I do believe it is genuine but I would probably have been more dismissive of it had I seen it for sale somewhere else.

Antiques 5-3-09

The first set of pictures are of a piece of kiln furniture from an Iga kiln.  I am unsure if it is Ko-Iga or newer. I am always amazed at what has value. This particular piece is like hundreds I have seen laying around at the sites of old kilns. I have always felt that the development of the eye is the most important part of being a potter or an antiques dealer. When I look at this vase I only re-affirm that thought.

The next piece is a lacquer piece from the time period between 1844-1853. The style is “hori-e”. The gold is applied before the lacquer is dry. The writing, 嘉永年間, reads ke ei nen kan which is a period that ran  from 1844-1853. Again my notes fail me. I distinctly remember talk about  black ships and Commodore Perry during the discussion of these bowls. I was too busy taking pictures to write down what was said. Perry  came to Japan in 1852-53 so I am sure I am remembering correctly but I can’t recall the substance of what was said.