A piece, most likely dating from the period 1920-1930. Finely-done cross-hatch woven sooted bamboo, with 'root bamboo' rim with rattan knotting.

Fine, Chinese shape, super-fine lacquered bamboo strips (about 1mm wide, and 0.2mm thick), with carved lacquered bamboo handle. This piece was probably made in the 1915-1925 timeframe, and is a fine example of its type. Chikuunsai I's sukashi-ami weaving technique is unsurpassed to this day. This basket is a bit more than 16" high and weighs less than 2.5 ounces.

This basket was made by Tanabe Chikuunsai II before he took the name from his father. Before he became Chikuunsai he used the artist name Shochiku ("Little Bamboo"), for several years in the mid 1930s. He took the name Chikuunsai upon his father's death in 1937, and held it for close to 50 years before passing it to his son who became Chikuunsai III, the currently active Chikuunsai. His own son has taken up the mantle and works under two names - his own, Tanabe Takeo, for modern art works, and the name Tanabe Shochiku for his works in the traditional genre. The youngest Tanabe tours internationally to exhibit and make presentations. This basket is 'experimental' because it is made with aspects which were quite different from Kansai area and Chikuunsai family-style baskets. The long splines are of un-stripped bamboo, showing the skin and using the nodes as features. The asymmetric node placement is deliberate, creating a jazzy counterpoint to his normal baskets which would have shaved part of the node and made the node placement highly ordered. In addition, the wrapping at the basket's mouth and method of fixing the handle (not shown) are very much reminiscent of Iizuka family styles. Every now and then these study pieces were done as artists tried to understand the techniques and traits of their rivals, but they were rarely signed and rarely made it out of the studio because in some sense they 'betrayed' the artist's sense of experimentation with others' techniques.

Suehiro means 'morning glory shape' in Japanese, and was a reasonably popular shape in the late 1930s during wartime as for Japanese the shape evoked traditional elements while the design was extremely modern. It is likely that this piece was made somewhat later (likely in the late 40s to early 1960s), nevertheless it is an extremely modern shape and design, and would not be out of place in a modern art gallery.

This basket made of sooted bamboo is made of solid pieces which are split lengthwise at the ends so the part above the 'waist' appear to be more numerous than the bottom half. Sakaguchi Sounsai studied basketry under Tanabe Chikuunsai I and made the basket which co-won the first prize at an officially sponsored art exhibition in Japan which featured bamboo works alongside other craft art works in 1929 (much to the chagrin of Iizuka Rokansai). Sounsai is one of my favorite artists of the early 20th century because of his skill in manipulating bamboo, and his selection of materials. This basket dates from the 1930s (about 14" high).

This basket made by Maeda Chikubosai is extremely representative of his technique. He worked from the late 1890s through the late 1920s to early 1930s in Osaka. He had several rich merchants as patrons and made many baskets and pieces for the sencha tea ceremony, much like Tanabe Chikuunsai I and Iizuka Hosai and Rokansai. This piece shows a variety of weaving and wrapping techniques. At some point between 1912 and 1920 he worked quite closely with Tanabe Chikuunsai.

Suzuki Gengensai came from a line of basketmakers and craft artists in the Kansai area. This basket comes from the 1925-1940 timeframe, and features an extremely interesting handle - the bamboo culm has been shaved/smoothed, and then bent at sharp angles. In fact, it is eminently possible that Gengensai ordered the bamboo grown like this, but it is more likely that it was bent using heat. Gengensai (also known as Gangansai) was deeply involved in tea ceremony-related craft art - perhaps more concentrated in that area than any other well-known Kansai basketmaker of his time.

This piece was made in the 1920s. It is not clear when it was made, though the carved signature suggests it was signed in the late 1920s, after his younger brother Rokansai had fully split from his brother's atelier. That said, the work from this piece is far more like that of his brother than it is like Hosai II's own work. Hosai II (or his workshop) made a very similar piece submitted to the 1925 World Industrial Arts Exhibition in Paris, where it won a prize. This piece was either made by his brother earlier, then copied for the 1925 Exhibition, or it was made by his brother after the 1925 exhibition. Given the timing of their split and the fact that Rokansai used his own signature in the later years while working at brother Hosai's atelier would suggest it was made earlier, left unsigned, then signed later and sold. While not strictly a basket, it was made by a basketmaker for the tea ceremony and is probably the prize in my collection.

This basket was made in the atelier of Hosai II, and signed with the name of Hosai, but it was made and signed by one of the better student/disciples, Nakata Kinseki. It was probably made in the very late 1920s or perhaps the early 1930s. We know it is Kinseki because of the extremely distinctive signature etching. I find this basket interesting because of the round base and lozenge-shaped mouth. This basket is representative of Iizuka family basket-making because of the use of the 'masawari' splitting technique (radial splitting of the bamboo culm).

This basket is signed Hosai III by Hosai II's younger brother Rokansai (please see explanation in other Hosai III basket description). The piece is very large and dynamic, and uses extremely difficult to work-with sooted bamboo from the roof lining of old Japanese farmhouses. The handle is made of a single large piece of rattan which has been split in half lengthwise, then paired with its other half, and twisted (with 'extreme prejudice') to form a kind of rope. Rokansai described the three kinds of baskets as 'Shin', 'Gyo', and 'So' with So being the most difficult to make. 'Shin' is the most formal type of extremely delicate weaving, for exhibition and 'formal' works. 'Gyo' is slightly informal, but still with strongly formal references. 'So' is free form and moving. This is 'So.'

This basket was made by Hosai II's younger brother, Iizuka Rokansai. At some point in the very late 1910s to the early 1920s, he was expected to take the Hosai name and become Hosai III. Very few baskets are signed using that name. He subsequently signed baskets Rokansai and split with his brother on less than excellent terms it is said. This basket has a cross-weave of what appears to be two-toned bamboo. In fact, it is bleached bamboo strips, which have had the middle of the outer skin stripped off with a knife (leaving only the node fully 'white'), then lacquered and wiped so that the center takes on a dark red/brown color. This piece then has a variety of interesting small bamboo knotty culms used to make the handle, wrapping, and base. The base is formed hexagonally, and the basket is woven upwards to make a round rim. One of my favorite pieces.

Iizuka Rokansai studied under his father and his older brother, becoming a master basketmaker by the time he was 16, leaving for school and studying painting but coming back to be a basketmaker. He strove to make the art what it became, and is widely viewed among basket connoisseurs as the most influential of Japanese basketmakers. This basket uses a very simple weave where the thin strips are twisted completely again and again to form the body of the basket. This too is a 'So' piece, and the 'syncopated' wrapping around the rim is classic Rokansai.

This basket was made by Yokota Hosai, also known as Yokota Minesai (the Hosai characters can be pronounced either way, but are different than the Hosai in the Iizuka family). He came from Ehime Prefecture, was a soldier in the Imperial Army during WWII, and after the war moved to the southern Kanto area (around Yokohama) to pursue basket-making. He is one of the most creative basketmakers out there - perhaps not technically as strong as Rokansai, but perhaps his equal in creativity, and certainly more interested in challenging the boundaries of his art than most of his contemporaries (or basketmakers since). Relatively little is known of this basketmaker, though he was strongly influenced by Kanto/Iizuka artists, and studied under at least one of them. The quality of his bamboo, and his technique in making difficult-to-use sooted bamboo do what he wanted was unsurpassed. One of my favorite basketmakers. This basket likely dates from the 1950s-1960s.

This basket was made by Iizuka Shokansai in the mid 1970s. The tabane-ami (layered bundle weaving) technique was originally used a thousand years ago in baskets made for food offerings at Shinto shrines. The technique was re-introduced by Shokansai's father Iizuka Rokansai or possibly by Hosai II (or by Rokansai while working in his brother's atelier). It is formed by making 8 bundles of flat strips (14 strips to a bundle in this case) which are 2mm wide by about 0.3mm thick. The bundles themselves are then woven in an elaborate design, making for '8 windows' around the largest part of the basket. In certain places the bundles are fanned out to give a more solid surface, ending in a rim structure which is finished with fine rattan knotting/weaving. Iizuka Shokansai was active in the period from the late 1940s through about 2000. He was named a Living National Treasure in the early 1980s, the third to be so named (many of the earlier basketmakers featured in this 'system' passed away before the Living National Treasure designation was introduced in the late 1950s).

Matsumoto Hafu is a basket maker active today. He is in his mid 50s and lives and works in southern Chiba Prefecture. He was one of the last two students of Iizuka Shokansai, and mastered the Iizuka technique of stripping and flattening very wide pieces of bamboo and shaping them. He makes several kinds of pieces but my favorites of his are of the flat 'noshidake' type like this. This piece was made in 2008. I love its compactness.

This piece was made by Hafu in 2006 using extremely wide pieces of noshi flattened bamboo. The pieces are flattened so that he makes a cross at the bottom which is flat, and as the pieces come up, the edges are curved into a circle alignment to form a base for the rim, which sits atop mini bundle-weave 'comb forms'. In late 2009, Hafu was named the 2009 Cotsen Prize Winner. The Cotsen Prize (the 2009 prize being the 10th or so) is given each year to the basketmaker deemed to be most worthy. Llyod Cotsen, former head of Neutrogena Corporation, was one of the foremost basket collectors of the last 2-3 decades, eventually giving the collection to the Asian Art Museum a few years ago.

This basket is like a jewel. It was made by Uematsu Chikuyu who has been making baskets for about 30 years as of now. He is still 'active' but he makes about 2 baskets a year, and is considered by the unfortunately relatively few people who have seen his works, to be a perfectionist. This piece is about 8 inches tall and took him 4-5 months to make. It is made of lacquered 'tiger bamboo' and the finest rattan weaving I have ever seen.

This basket made of bleached bamboo is among my favorites. It was made in the early 2000s by Tanioka Shigeo of Kyoto, who studied under Tanabe Chikuunsai II. Originally an industrial designer, he saw a basket exhibition a few decades ago and was so struck he approached Chikuunsai II to ask him to allow to study under him. He quit his job to become a basketmaker and now makes his living solely as a bamboo artist (as does his wife, Tanioka Aiko). This piece is such a brilliant display of mastery of bamboo design that I hardly know where to start. Barely visible is the fact that it has a double 'hull', where the bottom frame curls over at the edge to become the top, whereupon the wide-cut pieces narrow towards the center, where they are folded down to form a wine-bottle-bottom shape inside, which is suspended by the tension of the form and material over the outer hull which forms a round bowl-shaped base underneath what you see here. The finish of the piece is so exquisite that it is almost impossible to figure out where the bamboo strips begin and where they end, and when you finally figure it out, you are even more impressed by the technique he used to finish it. I look at this piece to inspire myself to be creative in finding a solution to a heretofore intractable problem.