SIGNED ?KEYA CHU [CAST BY ?KEYA] WITH A SEAL SUGIURA, MEIJI PERIOD (LATE 19TH CENTURY)

The decoration on this outstanding dish is almost certainly the work of Sugiura Yukimune, one of two brothers (the other named Yukinari) who worked for the Kiritsu Kosho Kaisha (First Manufacturing Company] in the 1870s and 1880s. This attribution is based on a very similar owl design on a vase in the Khalili collection which is signed Yukimune [see 1 below]

1 Joe Earle, Splendors of Meiji: Treasures of Imperial Japan, Masterpieces from the Khalili Collection (St. Petersburg, Florida, 1999), 44-5.