.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
Although most often associated with large-scale bronze figures of samurai [see 1 below] the Miyao Company also manufactured or dealt in a wide range of craft goods including Shibayama-work panels and ivory figures. Apparently based first in Yokohama and later, after about 1890, in Nihonbashi-ku, Tokyo, the company is first recorded at the Second Naikoku kangyo hakurankai [National Industrial Exposition] of 1881, where Miyao Eisuke collaborated with Momose Sozaemon (1819-) in the production of a bronze figure of seven drunken shojo [see 2 below].
1 Joe Earle, Splendors of Meiji: Treasures of Imperial Japan, Masterpieces from the Khalili Collection (St. Petersburg, Florida, 1999), 95, 112-4
2 Tokyo Kokuritsu Bunkazai Kenkyujo [Tokyo National Research Institution of Cultural Properties], Naikoku kangyo hakurankai bijutsuhin shuppin mokuroku [Catalogs of objects exhibited at the National Industrial Expositions] (Tokyo, 1996), II 1163-4, 1176; IIIb 412, 632-3.
1 Joe Earle, Splendors of Meiji: Treasures of Imperial Japan, Masterpieces from the Khalili Collection (St. Petersburg, Florida, 1999), 95, 112-4
2 Tokyo Kokuritsu Bunkazai Kenkyujo [Tokyo National Research Institution of Cultural Properties], Naikoku kangyo hakurankai bijutsuhin shuppin mokuroku [Catalogs of objects exhibited at the National Industrial Expositions] (Tokyo, 1996), II 1163-4, 1176; IIIb 412, 632-3.