THE RAKE SIGNED MITSUHARU; THE PLATE SIGNED MITSUNAGA TO [CARVED BY MITSUNAGA], SHOWA PERIOD (20TH CENTURY)

Born in 1850 the son of a samurai, Toyokawa Mitsunaga resolved to make metalwork his trade when his father resigned his post in 1866. After a period of study with the Yanagawa family, he began to exhibit around 1877, showing a tobacco-box of silver, shakudo and gold at the first Naikoku kangyo hakurankai [National Industrial Exposition] and three boxes at the second exposition in 1881. Like several other metalworkers he met an untimely death, along with members of his family, in the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923.

For another example of his work, signed with his studio name Hakusanshi, see Joe Earle and Goke Tadaomi, Meiji no takara, Treasures of Imperial Japan, Masterpieces by Shibata Zeshin (London, 1996), cat. no. 66.