A Rare Documentary Bronze Flower Vase
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A Rare Documentary Bronze Flower Vase

SIGNED WATANABE MASATSUGU, EDO PERIOD (ABOUT 1701)

Details
A Rare Documentary Bronze Flower Vase
Signed Watanabe Masatsugu, Edo Period (about 1701)
The brown and reddish patinated bronze ovoid body narrowing to a tall integral foot cast with a band of wave decoration, the lower half of the broad neck with a band of archaistic Chinese-style ornament, with two dragon handles, widening to a stepped vertical rim, signed in engraved characters on the base Meibutsu Asaoka hanaire o utsushite Watanabe Omi no Daijo Minamoto no Masatsugu gyonen gojurokusai kore o saku [made by Watanabe Omi no Daijo Minamoto no Masatsugu at the age of fifty-six, a copy of the celebrated flower-vase known as 'Asaoka']
11in. (28cm.) high
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Lot Essay

This is an exceptionally rare instance of a Japanese bronze signed and inscribed to the effect that it was copied from an earlier Chinese original. The only two other recorded examples, discussed by the great metalwork historian Katori Hozuma in an article published in 1924,1 are also signed by Watanabe Omi (1646-), a bronzecaster based in the northern city of Hirosaki and known from other inscriptions to have been active until 1693, making the present Lot his latest known piece. Although the Chinese original known as Asaoka has not been traced, it would probably have dated from the 12th to the 14th century; for examples of such bronzes, which were exceedingly popular in Japan during the Muromachi and Edo periods, see Rose Kerr, Later Chinese Bronzes (London, 1990), plates 34-38.

1 Katori Hozuma, 'Sakka Watanabe Omi saku no ushi no suiteki [An ox-shaped water-dropper in bronze by Watanabe Omi]' in ibid., Kinkoshidan [Studies in the history of metalwork] (Tokyo, 1941), pp. 470-4

2 Joe Earle, Flower Bronzes of Japan (London, 1995), pp. 42-3

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