Flower arranging basket in a long, ovoid form with an arcing handle meant to suggest a treasure boat. Of honey-toned, smoked and split bamboo with a wiped lacquer finish. Unsigned. Late Taisho – early Showa era, circa 1920 – 1940.

With a new, paulownia wood storage box.

Though unsigned, this stylized river-boat basket appears to be the work of a very talented artist. The face is woven in a variation of mat plaiting, perhaps the simplest of techniques. Each of the long stays alternate between showing the satin-skin side up and the matte, scored reverse. The short stays in the plaiting running from side to side vary in width. Those at either end of the basket are very narrow; then they broaden; and again narrow and broaden to create a staggered texture and movement across the length of the boat. All of the bamboo slats running across the face jump over two of the long stays (rather than one). This loosens the plaiting and raises them up to rippling effect. Finely trimmed nodes cluster over the face in waving diagonals. The rims and the simple foot-ring are of diagonal, simple wrapping (bo-maki). From several points on one side and from one on the other, the ends of rim stays are intentionally wrapped in across the face with twisting, curling movement. A massive section of branch bamboo arches over the length of the boat, anchored on either end by an irregular square plaiting. Where it bends, the handle branches into abruptly trimmed heavy nodes and fingers, a group of which stretch beneath to run back to the bow of the boat. The honey-toned surface of the bamboo is enriched by the uneven, thin amber lacquering.

This basket belonged to the wife of an important Kyoto art dealer for the past thirty years. Every day she arranged flowers in it; every year she refused to sell it. They originally acquired it in the Nara area.

However, it may not have been made in the Kansai; it seems more likely to be the work of a Tokyo artist. The sophistication of the weaving and the use of materials immediately suggest another treasure boat in the Cotsen Collection by Yokota Minesai (for which c.f. Japanese Bamboo Baskets: Masterworks of Form & Texture From the Collection of Lloyd Cotsen, number 198). Another intriguing comparison that startles can be found on page 124 of Iizuka Rokansai: Master of Modern Bamboo Crafts, illustrating a Rokansai treasure boat dating to 1936.

Whoever made this had a wonderful sense of tempo, of proportion, and of how to vary classical idiom simply to complex effect. He relied on color, texture, and balance rather than complex knotting or plaiting. It took a confident brilliance to weight the slight skiff with a massive section of bamboo. The result works as wonderfully as a vessel for flowers, fruit or leaves, as it does by itself as sculpture.