Vase with Poppies

This vase—with its Western-derived shape, graduated gray-to-salmon ground, exuberant borders and floral motifs, and a hammered-out circle demarcating body from foot—shows sophistication in both form and decoration. The bokashi technique, in which a color subtly graduates from one shade to another, is used in both the background and within individual petals. The green stems and leaves, dense where the vase is narrow and more widely spaced as they rise toward the top, enhance the upward-expanding shape of the vase and the three-dimensionality of its central image.

Although unsigned, the vase was probably made in the Andō studio between about 1908 and 1915. If in fact produced before 1911, it was almost certainly created by Kawade Shibatarō , the factory head. The complex, less traditional form and the borders may imply a slightly later date, after Kawade had retired in 1910, but the superb quality suggests Kawade’s direct involvement. Patrons, including the imperial household, often requested that makers not sign their pieces, and this vase is likely to have been made for a specific buyer rather than sold in an Andō shop.
Collection of Fredric T. Schneider