Bowl with Grape Pattern

Kitaōji Rosanjin was responsible for reviving many different Japanese ceramic traditions in the mid-twentieth century, by which time war and industrialization had led to their near extinction. With its natural motifs carefully rendered in underglaze iron brown, this bowl makes clear reference to Kyoto ware created a hundred years earlier by Nin’ami Dōhachi (such as the gourd-shaped bowl displayed nearby). Through the filter of Dōhachi wares, the bowl also draws inspiration from ceramics made by the eighteenth-century artists Ogata Kōrin and Ogata Kenzan, who also used iron brown decoration on clay as if it were ink on paper.