Flower arranging basket in an asymmetrical, collapsing bag or urn form. Woven of split and leached, blond bamboo. Signed on the reverse with an incised signature by the artist: Rokansai Saku or Made by Rokansai (Iizuka Rokansai, the go or art name of Iizuka Yanosuke, 1890 – 1958). Showa era, circa 1953 – 1955.

With the tomobako or original box, inscribed on the exterior of the lid: Hana Kago or Flower Basket; and on the reverse of the lid titled: Uzukumaru or Whirlpool, and signed: Rokansai Saku or Made by Rokansai, and sealed. The signature and seal are identical with those illustrated in Iizuka Rokansai: Master of Modern Bamboo Crafts, pages 119, lower register on the far right, dated to 1953 and 1955.

With Whirlpool, Iizuka Rokansai took an elemental approach, folding and collapsing a three dimensional container into itself. What might have been the original base to a free standing, urn-form is woven in a regular square plaiting. Then it torques to form a backwards-leaning side, as any pretense to symmetry collapses like a failed jar from a medieval kiln. What was a side becomes the new base, with two slats inserted to remind the viewer of true north or south. Like a whirlpool, this basket turns on itself and disorients assumptions. The skin of the basket resolves into texture, as Rokansai warps a twining plait (nawa-ami) by twisting every horizontal strand continuously. These seem to turn in constant movement. Amazingly Rokansai turns most of the bamboo satin skin out, only occasionally contrasting their matte interiors. Looking into the mouth of the basket, one most clearly sees the original structure. Around the mouth a froth of delicate, finger-branch bamboo turns on itself, bound with diagonal, simple wrapping (bo-maki). Here alone does one see the texturing nodes, elsewhere entirely trimmed flat into a revolving expanse of wave-like plaiting.

For another of Rokansai’s baskets that experiments with this plaiting, c.f. the Tochigi Prefectural Museum of Fine Art’s catalogue, Iizuka Rokansai: Master of Modern Bamboo Crafts, number 58, titled Yadokari or Hermit Crab.