Flower Basket by Morigami Jin

Morigami Jin / 森上仁

b. 1955

Flower Basket

15.8 x 7.1 x 7.1 in

40 x 18 x 18 cm​

Original box signed and sealed by the artist

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An utterly unique and very early experimental work by an esteemed contemporary bamboo artist. Created when the artist was in his middle 20s, this basket remains strikingly innovative and unique even despite three decades of intense creativity in the field. Working in his spare time (as he was then engaged in commercial production basketry), Morigami Jin composed this extremely suggestive abstract hanging basket of three distinct layers.

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A tulip-shaped mat plaited basket is suspended within and supported by an exterior freely woven structure of honey-colored madake. Several strands from this external layer wind through the rim of this middle basket to form a nearly invisible hexagonally plaited interior third layer. Gaps in the cocoon-like external weave reveal the finely plaited middle structure protected within, as if an inner sanctum. The irregular oblong form and wispy textured surface also suggest a quantum architecture. This novel form appears as natural in a traditional display space as in a glass house. It is as at ease resting on its side as hung upright from the wall.

Morigami Jin's work is featured in every exhibition and publication of contemporary basket art in the last decades. His work is included in the permanent collections of the San Francisco Asian Art Museum and the N.Y. Museum of Arts and Design, among others. He was the first contemporary bamboo artist to be included in the permanent collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York..