Flower arranging basket in a flowing, circular form with a rounded handle. Woven of split, smoked bamboo. Signed on the reverse with an incised signature by the artist: Suishin Saku or Made by Suishin (Buseki Suishin, 1888 – 1983 or 1994). Taisho – early Showa era, circa 1920 – 1940.

With a new paulownia storage box.

Born in Tochigi, Buseki Suishin studied under Iizuka Hosai I from the age of 12. He moved to Tokyo with the Iizuka family, eventually becoming an independent artist with a studio in the Ueno district. He exhibited work at the Ministry of Commerce and Industry sponsored Noten exhibitions (in 1922, 1934 with an honorable mention, and again in 1936).

For other examples of his work, c.f. Melissa Rinne’s Masters of Bamboo, page 44, number 2 (which gives his death date as 1994); and Moroyama Masanori’s Bamboo Masterworks: Japanese Baskets from the Lloyd Cotsen Collection, page 100, number 67 (which gives a death date of 1983).

Buseki sculpts a wave-like, fluid study in bamboo that conveys a sense of informal improvisation. This natural elegance reflects the curving lines of the rim, rising and falling assymetrically as they balance and become the handle. Hexagonal plaiting of paired stays forms the base. As these rise up the open-work sides, the strands separate and fan before gathering into the twisting, heavier treatments of the rim. From the higher curves of the sides, two bundles of bamboo arc together from one side to fan through the opposing rim into the body on the other. Two flattened ribbons of bamboo twist round the handle bunches, tying them together and underscoring the sense of rippling movement.