12 Japanese Art


Vase with chrysanthemum design by Hayashi Kodenji, circa 1900, LACMA, promised Gift from the Japanese Cloisonné Enamels Collection of Donald K Gerber and Sueann E Sherry in honour of the museum’s 50th anniversary. All Photos © Museum/Associates except where indicated


Dish in the form of a lotus leaf by Kawade Shibataro, circa 1900, LACMA, gift from the Japanese Cloisonné Enamels Collection of Donald K Gerber and Sueann E Sherry


Incense burner (koro) with design of cranes and pine by Namikawa Yasuyuki, circa 1905-1915, LACMA, gift from the Japanese Cloisonné Enamels Collection of Donald K. Gerber and Sueann E Sherry


Vase with design of carp, one of a pair by Ota Jinnoei, circa 1920, LACMA, promised gift from the Japanese Cloisonné Enamels Collection of Donald K Gerber and Sueann E Sherry. Photo © Museum Associates/LACMA


Polished to Perfection by Juliet Highet


Arguably, a thoroughly unexpected celebrity became entranced by Japanese cloisonné – Rudyard Kipling. He describes his reaction to seeing the cloisonné process like this: ‘It is one thing to read of cloisonné making, but quite another to watch it being made. I began to understand the cost of the ware when I saw a man working out a pattern of sprigs and butterflies on a plate about ten inches in diameter. With finest silver ribbon wire, set on edge, less than the sixteenth of an inch high, he followed the curves of the drawing at his side, pinching the wire into tendrils and the serrated outlines of leaves with infinite patience … Followed the colouring, which was done by little boys in spectacles. With a pair of tiniest steel chopsticks they filled from bowls at their sides each compartment of the pattern with its proper hue of paste … I saw a man who had only been a month over the polishing of one little vase five inches high. He would go on for two months. When I am in America he will be rubbing still, and the ruby-coloured dragon that romped on a field of lazuli, each tiny scale and whisker a separate compartment of enamel, will be growing more lovely.’ Kipling wrote this in Sea to Sea & Other Sketches, Letters of Travel published in 1889. Polished to Perfection is the


abbreviated title of an exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) focusing on the ‘Golden Age’ of Japanese cloisonné enamelware (around 1880 to 1910). From tentative beginnings in the 1830s in Nagoya, by the first decade of the 20th century cloisonné production had bloomed into one of Japan’s most successful forms of manufacture and export. During this


ASIAN ART NOVEMBER 2017


Golden Age it achieved not only a peak of creative and technical sophistication, but also a pinnacle of exquisitely delicate beauty. Becoming internationally famous,


it was


displayed at the world exhibitions of the era. It was artistically influential too, giving birth, amongst other media, to the passion for Japonism, that craze for Japanese art and design in the West. During the Golden Age of


cloisonné production four great masters


of the genre emerged:


Kawade Shibataro (1856-1921), Namikawa Yasuyuki (1845-1927), Namikawa Sosuke (1847-1919) and Hayashi Kodenji (1832-1915). Tese and other exponents of the renaissance of Japanese cloisonné are represented by approximately 150 works in the LACMA exhibition, taken from the Collection of Donald K Gerber and Sueann E Sherry. Tis collection, built over the course of more than four decades, is of museum quality, and works in the collection are either gifted or promised gifts to LACMA. It represents the Golden Age characteristics of both intricate or minimal surface design; a highly sophisticated and often memorably translucent use of colour; expanded varieties of form, for instance into ground- breaking three-dimensional vessels; different enamelling styles and materials for the wires separating the cloisons (the French word for ‘areas’); and the flawless, perfection’


‘polished to surfaces lauded by


Rudyard Kipling. In the associated catalogue for the exhibition, Michael Govan, CEO and Director of LACMA, alludes to the immense variation in style and finish of Japanese art: ‘While some of the finest works are rough-hewn, visibly handmade objects revered for their imperfection,


others are


Box with design of crow on branch by Namikawa Sosuke, circa 1890-1893, LACMA, from the Japanese Cloisonné Enamels Collection of Donald K Gerber and Sueann E Sherry. photo © Museum Associates/LACMA


immaculate, intricate pieces whose making seems almost impossible to comprehend. Te art form that has long been Donald Gerber’s passion is a prime example of the latter type of Japanese art: cloisonné works, made through a painstaking process that involves the application of wire and enamel to copper cores, displaying a preternatural polish. Donald has spent his life gathering together the finest cloisonné specimens, and his and Sueann’s remarkable collection includes masterworks by virtuosos of the form’. Donald K Gerber describes in his to this


introduction luminous


enamelware, ‘Some 45 years ago, in a little Kyoto studio called Inaba, I was introduced to a type of art that would become the centrepiece of my life. My first encounter with Japanese cloisonné enamels was a revelation; for me, looking at a piece of cloisonné was more like looking into it and


seeing a magical, mystical, miniature world of nature. ‘My deep interest in Japanese


cloisonné has led me on a nearly 50- year journey across the country and around the world to meet fascinating people and examine exquisite art. It has been physical, intellectual and spiritual. I have hunted down cloisonné objects, studied the history of this unique art form, and been moved by the beauty of each piece I have found along the way. ‘Over the decades, my collecting


has evolved. Like a Bonsai tree, the Gerber/Sherry collection has been planted, pruned, and finely manicured – or, indeed, like cloisonné itself, which is created through a laborious process that includes decorating, firing and polishing, the collection has been


“polished to perfection”. And the journey is still going on’. Shippo, the Japanese word for enamelware,


characters translating as


is composed of ‘Seven


Treasures’. Tis is a reference to the seven treasures mentioned in Buddhist texts,


which include


substances of vivid colour such as emerald, coral, lapis lazuli and gold. Chinese cloisonné enamels had long been admired and highly valued by the Japanese, who applied the term shippo to the rich colours of Chinese production, and later to cloisonné objects made by their own craftspeople. Tere are few early examples of Japanese cloisonné apart from


architectural details such as small door fittings with enamelled designs in the Phoenix Hall (1053) of the Byodoin Temple near Kyoto, and cloisonné enamel-decorated details used for the Higashiyama retreat of the shogun Ashikaya Yoshimasa (1436-90) in eastern Kyoto. A gilded bronze door-pull


(hikite) with cloisonné enamel decoration, dated


Vase with design of flowering wisteria by Kawade Shibataro, circa 1905, LACMA, promised gift from the Japanese Cloisonné Enamels Collection of Donald K Gerber and Sueann E Sherry. Photo © Museum Associates/LACMA


circa 1700, is in the collection of the V&A, London. But this hikite pales in stylistic and technical comparison to the cloisonné of the later Golden Age. Otherwise,


prior to that


resplendent era, enamelling in Japan was also used for decorative nail covers (kugi-kakushi),


and water-


droppers (suiteki), which were part of writing sets. However,


the samurai had for


centuries commissioned fine decoration for the fittings of their swords, in particular the sword- guards (tsuba), which were often works of art in their own right. Te Hirata School, productive well into the 19th century, was famous for the


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