SIGNED MIYAO, EARLY-MID MEIJI PERIOD (LATE 19TH CENTURY)

Details

A LARGE BRONZE VASE
Signed Miyao, Early-Mid Meiji Period (Late 19th Century)
With yellow-brown patination, the ovoid body with a short everted neck and integral base with six lappet-shaped feet, decorated in silver, gilding, shakudo [copper-gold alloy] and shibuichi [copper- silver alloy] high and applied relief with cranes in flight and bamboo on the body, below a band of low-relief confronted ho-o bird motifs and above a narrow band of floral ornament, the base with stylised butterflies and foliage, signed on the base Miyao with a seal
16¾in. (42.5cm.) high

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Lot Essay

Although most often associated with large-scale bronze figures of samurai,1 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 then, after about 1890, in Nihonbashi-ku, Tokyo, the company is first recorded at the second Naikoku Kangyo Hakurankai [National Industrial Exposition] where Miyao Eisuke collaborated with the bronzecaster Momose Sozaemon in the production of a bronze figure of seven drunken shojo.2

1 Joe Earle, Splendors of Meiji: Treasures of Imperial Japan, Masterpieces from the Khalili Collection (St. Petersburg, Florida, Broughton International Publications, 1999), pp. 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, Chuokoron Bijutsu Shuppan, 1996), II 1163-4, 1176; IIIb 412, 632-3

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