SIGNED NAMIKAWA AND WITH INITIALS G.P., MEIJI PERIOD (CIRCA 1897)

The earliest Japanese cloisonné vessels, made in the mid-19th century, were decorated with rough, dark enamelling in a crude imitation of Chinese prototypes but already by the late 1880s Japanese enamel was one of the wonders of the international marketplace. The present lot, one of the largest and most finely worked examples of cloisonné ware from the studio of the leading Kyoto enamel artist Namikawa Yasuyuki (1845-1927), is an outstanding demonstration of his extraordinarily skilful gold wirework and his achievement in developing enamel pastes that would adhere securely to the body of the vessel. This allowed him to leave large areas of unsupported background colour, and so develop the fluid, pictorial style of decoration for which he is so admired. In terms of subject-matter as well this vase shows how far Namikawa had departed from the sometimes confused medley of Chinese motifs seen on earlier enamels (his own included) and developed a confidently Japanese idiom based on the work of later artists of the Shijo school. Works such as this exemplify Namikawa's success in responding to growing demands for a more pictorial, as well as a more nativist, approach to decoration; in 1895 the judges at the fourth Naikoku Kangyo Hakurankai [National Industrial Exposition] had already praised his shift from 'traditional' (discreet code, perhaps, for 'Chinese') motifs to 'a picture far beyond a mere pattern'. 1 Their comments were motivated not only by an awareness that fussy over-decoration was becoming unfashionable in America and Europe but also by the general decline in the traditional respect for Chinese art and culture that followed Japan's relatively easy defeat of her great continental neighbour in the Sino-Japanese war (1894-5).

A similar chicken design in Namikawa's design books is dated 1897 and the dramatic reduction in scale of the decorative borders at foot and ring (the result of Namikawa's project to pictorialise his art) also points towards the closing years of the nineteenth century as the most likely period of manufacture, since total elimination of borders does not appear to have occurred before about 1900-03.2 As noted above the border around the foot includes the Western letters G.P. Although Yasuyuki's design books include a few drawings that incorporate Western monograms and initials, there appears to be no published example of a G. P.3 We do know, however, that by the early 1890s his Kyoto workshop, where he employed some ten artists, was a popular destination for wealthy Western tourists. In fact it appears that a high proportion of his output (leaving aside the many works he produced for display at international expositions) was commissioned directly. As a later enthusiast, the photographer and Antarctic film-maker Herbert G. Ponting, was to write of a visit made in 1903:

...seldom, if ever, does the product of Namikawa's house appear in any of the shops. His output is so small that the demand for it from visiting connoisseurs and collectors is sometimes more than equal to the supply. There is no catering for the trade.4

Who, then, was G. P? Ponting himself is one possibility, but the initial G. rather than H., as well as the overall style of the decoration which suggests a somewhat earlier date than 1903, make it more likely that the vase was ordered by the Englishman George Henry Peters, who made a typically rapid circuit of the world in 1892-3, leaving Britain on 11 December and arriving in Japan on 28 March. In 1897 Peters published an account of his trip from which we learn that like so many contemporary globetrotters, he devoted much of his time in Kyoto to the purchase of embroidery, porcelain and enamel. On 5 April he visited:

the interesting silk embroidery establishment of Nishimura, the cloisonné enamel workshops of Namakawa [sic], porcelain factory of Kinkozan and the art curio museum of Ikeda [Ikeda Keisuke, the well-known Kyoto dealer].5

The visit to Namikawa in particular seems to have left a profound impression on Peters (as it would a decade later on Ponting), who wrote about the processes he observed at unusual length:

Cloisonné, or shippo, is a kind of enamel, having a very beautiful polish and colours, and the process of manufacture is a long and intricate one. First the coppersmith moulds and cuts the copper into the shape desired, then the wire is fixed on the piece accurately according to the design already drawn. The spaces between the wire are then filled in with enamel of different colours and fired. This firing process is repeated seven or eight times, and each time more enamel is filled in. After the firing is complete, the piece passes into the polishers' hands, and is then turned out as a finished specimen of cloisonné.6

As befits a special order, this very large (in enamel terms) vase seems not to fit within Namikawa's preferred range of sizes, most of his wares in this shape in the late 1890s and early 1900s (leaving aside miniature versions) being only just over 9 inches, and this together with the exceptional quality of the present lot and the geographical distances involved may account for the considerable delay between the likely commissioning and delivery dates, since as Ponting noted

[sometimes] unsightly marks begin to appear, showing that [the body] had been unable to stand the firing ordeal Thus it is that the finest specimens of cloisonné are so dear. The purchaser of the ultimate perfect piece must pay also for those ruined in the endeavour to produce it.7

This product of Namikawa's' spotless room, twenty feet in length, the floor covered in padded mats, on which, bending over, were ten artists'8 exemplifies the skill and confidence of one of Japan's greatest workshops and shows Namikawa Yasuyuki and his craftsmen at the height of their creative and technical powers.

1 Joe Earle, Splendors of Meiji: Treasures of Imperial Japan, Masterpieces from the Khalili Collection (St. Petersburg, Florida, Broughton International Publications, 1999), p. 218

2 Nakahara Kenji and Yoshida Mitsukuni, Kyo-shippo mon'yo shu [A Collection of Designs for Kyoto Enamels] (Kyoto, Tankosha, 1981), p. 160; see also Oliver Impey and Malcolm Fairley (eds.), Meiji no Takara: Treasures of Imperial Japan (The Nasser D.Khalili Collection of Japanese Art, London, Kibo Foundation, 1994), volume 3 (Enamel), cat. nos. 15-16 for much smaller pieces with similar designs

3 Nakahara and Yoshida, op. cit. pp. 43, 171, 173, 177 etc.

4 Herbert George Ponting, In Lotus-Land Japan (London, Macmillan, 1910), p. 58

5 George Henry Peters, Impressions of a Journey Round the World, Including India, Burmah and Japan (London, Waterlow, 1897), p. 239

6 Peters, op. cit., pp. 240-1

7 Ponting, op. cit., p. 65

8 Ponting, op. cit., p. 61