WITH AN IMPRESSED MARK KIRITSU KOSHO KAISHA AND KAKO [FIRST INDUSTRIAL MANUFACTURING CO., FOUNDED BY THE MEIJI GOVERNMENT], MEIJI PERIOD (19TH CENTURY)

This is one of a group of bronzes made by Suzuki Chokichi (1848-1919) in asscociation with the Kiritsu Kosho Kaisha, a semi-official global trading company set up in the wake of the Vienna Exposition of 1873. With a few exceptions these vases, which are either signed Kako (one of Chokichi's names) or, more rarely, Kiritsu Kosho Kaisha (as above), are the same shape, and between 27 and 29 centimetres high (see 1 and 2 below). The designs, which are mostly based on one of the 1,969 drawings dating from between 1877 and 1890, commissioned from various artists by the Kiritsu Kosho Kaisha company and now preserved in Tokyo University of Arts (see 3 below). While Chokichi apparently supervised the casting process, the elaborate soft-metal decoration was carried out by other craftsmen who had earlier trained as sword-fitting makers; the name of one of these specialists, Sugiura Yukinari, is preserved on two bronzes in the Khalili Collection (see 4 below). These bronzes are rightly regarded as a triumphant combination of the two dominant metalworking traditions of pre-modern Japan: bronzecasting and chiselling in gold, silver and a variety of copper alloys.

1 Earle, Joe, Flower Bronzes of Japan, (London, 1995), nos. 84-88, in the Perry Foundation (three), Michael Goedhuis and the Victoria
and Albert Museum collections

2 Impey, Oliver and Fairley, Malcolm (eds.), The Nasser D. Khalili
Collection of Japanese Art, vol. 2, Metalwork, (London, 1994), no. 5

3 Hida Toyjiro, Kiritsu kosho kaisha kogei shitazushu: Meiji no
yushutsu kogei zuan [A collection of designs and preparatory drawings for decorative arts for the Kiritsu Kosho Kaisha: Designs for Meiji export wares] (Kyoto, 1987)

4 Impey, Oliver and Fairley, Malcolm (eds.), op. cit., nos. 3-5)