EDO PERIOD (18TH CENTURY), SIGNED KYOHO KANOTOSHI SHUJITSU RITSUO SEI (MADE BY RITSUO IN AUTUMN 1721) AND INLAID CERAMIC SEAL KAN (OGAWA HARITSU, 1663-1747)

Ogawa Haritsu, also known as Ritsuo, one of the great individualists in the history of lacquer, was a poet as well as a painter, potter and lacquerer. In the 1680s, he became a disciple of the haiku poet Matsuo Basho (1644-1694). Haritsu turned to lacquer after 1707, the year his friends Hattori Ransetsu and Takarai Kikaku, both disciples of Basho, died. He adopted the art name Ritsuo, or "Old man in a torn bamboo hat," in 1712. The name suggests a poet or artist wandering carefree.