Yokota Hosai (Yokota Minesai) /  横田峰斎   (Attributed)

1899 – 1975

Flower Basket

17 x 10 x 9 in

43 x 25 x 23 cm​

Unsigned box, original  lacquered water container

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This beautiful basket has no signature but its maker was certainly a skilled bamboo artist with particularly modern sensibility. It seems likely a work of Yokota Hosai, who is known to have left even excellent works unsigned. The basket has several features  characteristic of baskets made by fine bamboo artists of the Tokyo area: the use of nemagaridake for the handle and frame; the body woven simply in radially split bamboo darkened for contrast and left to show the natural 'free edge' of the nodes; the horizontal lines and large, relaxed geometric form; and the understated ease with which these contrasting elements are harmonized.

 

It is undoubtedly a basket with special awareness of the Iizuka studio. For works with similar features see: Yagisawa Keizo (1927-2006), Plate 70 in Masters of Bamboo: Artistic Lineages in the Lloyd Cotsen Japanese Basket Collection (Asian Art Museum, 2007), which effectively uses such free-edge radially-split lengths of bamboo; several works by Iizuka Rokansai (1867-1937) and Nakata Kinseki (1902-1959).

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