JAPAN, MEIJI PERIOD (EARLY 20TH CENTURY), SIGNED HOSHU-SO SHOMIN AND SEALED HOSHU SEI (UNNO SHOMIN (1844-1915), AND SEALED TOKYO HATTORI TOKEITEN KINSEI

Unno Shomin is regarded as one of the greatest metal artists of the Meiji and Taisho eras. Born in the castle town of Mito (present-day Ibaraki Prefecture), he began studying at the age of nine under his uncle Unno Yoshimori (Bisei) and Hagiya Katsuhira (1804–96), both leading exponents of the Mito school of sword fittings. He also studied painting with Adachi Baikei and calligraphy with Take Sojiro. In 1871, adopting the name Motohira, incorporating a character from Katsuhira’s name, he moved to Tokyo. Following the abolition of the samurai’s privilege of wearing two swords in 1876, Shomin turned to the production of decorative metalwork for domestic and international markets, exemplifying the transition of the traditional metalworker from the manufacture of sword fittings to that of decorative objects such as the box presented here.

Shomin exhibited widely, winning prizes at the first, second and several subsequent Domestic Industrial Exhibitions. In 1890, he was appointed to the Tokyo School of Art (now Tokyo University of the Arts), where he worked alongside Kano Natsuo (1828–98), whose influence on his work was profound; the two are also thought to have collaborated. Shomin was appointed lecturer in metalwork in 1894 and, like Natsuo, was honoured as a Teishitsu Gigeiin (Imperial Artist) in 1896. He adopted the name Shomin in homage to Yokoya Somin (1670–1733), the celebrated metalworker credited with perfecting katakiri-bori, a technique of carving with oblique cuts of the chisel in simulation of brush strokes.

For Shomin’s biography, see Wakayama Honmatsu, Kinko Jiten (A Dictionary of Metalworkers), Tokyo: Yuzankaku, 1972, pp. 54-55.