Nagowa

Meiji period, 19th century

1868-1912

Vases

A pair of beautifully worked bronze vases in gold, silver and Shakudo depicting Manchurian cranes wading in a lake.  All metalwork has been done in the Hirazogan technique. A metalsmith would chisel out the design on the body of the vase whereupon inlaying the different metals on the surface. Once this had been achieved the whole vase would be polished until completely flush leaving a smooth perfect surface.

You can see a very similar vase pair waiting to be worked on the shelves in this photo of the Nogawa company workshop in Kyoto 1885.

This kind of work was extremely laborious and mainly found on earlier Meiji period pieces. Due to the time-consuming work, the quality was massively reduced by 1910 to increase supply but in doing so flooded the market with inferior products leading to the collapsing of the market.    

Nagowa

290mm x 110mm