Vase in an ovoid form ornamented in relief with a cloud of stylized butterflies, of cast bronze. Signed on the reverse by the artist with a chiseled signature, Daiju (the go or art name of Tsuda Shinobu, 1875 – 1946). Early Showa era, circa 1930 – 1940.

Tsuda Shinobu was born in Chiba Prefecture. He studied under Okazaki Sessei and graduated from the Tokyo School of Fine Arts in 1900. In 1902, he returned to the school as an assistant professor, becoming a full professor in 1919. He began exhibiting his work in Meiji 40 or 1907 at the Tokyo Kangyo Hakurankai or Tokyo Industrial Exposition. A juror and exhibitor for the Japanese delegation to the Paris Exposition in 1925, Shinobu was twice decorated by the government of France, in 1928 and again in 1933. In 1935, he became a member of the Teikoku Bijutsuin or Imperial Academy of Fine Arts, and in 1937 of the Teikoku Geijutsuin or Imperial Arts Academy. An exhibitor at the Teiten, the Hoshukuten and Shin-Bunten, Tsuda Shinobu was one of the foremost artists working in metal in the decades prior to the Pacific War.

Tsuda Shinobu flattened and overlapped the butterflies, whose soft edges echo the curve of the vase.