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Antiques | Japanese bamboo art: Baskets and beyond

From ikebana flower containers to unique sculptures, beauty and form attract collectors.

A signed basket by Tanabe Chiku'unsai II of Osaka, made in 1970. It weighs only two ounces.
A signed basket by Tanabe Chiku'unsai II of Osaka, made in 1970. It weighs only two ounces.Read moreErik Thomsen Asian Art

In the second half of the 19th century, Japan emerged from political isolation and began exhibiting its traditional arts and crafts at well-attended world's fairs in major European and American cities.

The result was a greater appreciation for Japanese culture and a pop passion for its style - witness the success of Gilbert and Sullivan's operetta The Mikado in 1885.

But even as fine arts such as painting and calligraphy were being celebrated, it was hard not to notice the artistry used in making everyday objects such as baskets. Through the world's fairs, Westerners were introduced to ikebana, the Japanese art of flower arranging, in which baskets were often used.

Utilitarian basket-making in Japan goes back to prehistoric times, but collectors of historic bamboo baskets focus on beautifully executed pieces made for ikebana or the tea ceremony, as well as superb folk-art pieces that transcend their original function. Most of these examples, which have developed rich patinas from loving hands and smoky interiors, date to the 19th and early 20th centuries.

In a show earlier this year at their gallery in New York City, Erik and Cornelia Thomsen gathered more than 20 examples for "Masterworks in Bamboo: The Japanese Ikebana Basket."

"These baskets were highly prized by tea masters and commanded princely sums in the peak years of basket-making during the Taisho and early Showa periods, circa 1910 to 1940," Erik Thomsen says. "Their beauty is obvious in their form and, upon closer inspection, in the skillful workmanship of the fine details."

The exhibition included many signed examples, showing the pride the masters took in their work. The baskets, priced at $2,000 to $40,000, ranged from a smoked bamboo masterwork by Iizuka Rokansai (1890- 1958) to a 1970 work by Tanabe Chiku'unsai II (1910- 2000), an artist from an important Osaka basket-making family.

Jane Morrison, a member of the Philadelphia Ikebana Society (www.ikebana-philadelphia. org.), has created arrangements for the Asian galleries at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and presented demonstrations on using baskets in ikebana. She lived in Japan in the 1970s, a stay that was both her introduction to the art of flower arranging and a chance to acquire antique baskets to use in her compositions.

"I used to haunt the antique shops as well as the flea markets," Morrison says.

A lover of all types of baskets, Morrison counts among her Japanese favorites two square constructions, typical of the ancient capital Kyoto, that are lined with tin. She was told that they were originally used to carry charcoal during the tea ceremony. Another prize example is a square open-weave basket used to hold street clothes at traditional Japanese inns.

In 2001, the Art Museum acquired for its permanent collection a contemporary sculptural bamboo basket titled Let It Be by Takeo Tanabe, a fourth-generation member of a famous basket-making family in Osaka. The piece, exhibited at the Museum of Art Craft Fair that year, will go on display in the galleries this fall.

Felice Fischer, the museum's Luther W. Brady Curator of Japanese Art, says Tanabe's "great-grandfather, Chiku'unsai I, began making bamboo artifacts in 1890, and had the first one-man exhibition of bamboo crafts in 1915."

Takeo Tanabe was "trained by his grandfather and father in the craft," Fischer says, and studied sculpture at the National University of Fine Arts and Music in Tokyo.

"The hallmark of Tanabe's work is the beautiful amalgam of traditional technique and craftsmanship with a contemporary sculptural sensibility."

Robert Coffland, founder with wife Mary Hunt Kahlenberg of the Tai Gallery in Santa Fe, N.M., exhibits the work of such modern Japanese bamboo artists at major antiques fairs in New York, Palm Beach, San Francisco, and London. And, in spite of their recent dates, these baskets attract strong collector interest.

Coffland has two books in print: Hin: The Quiet Beauty of Japanese Bamboo Art, with Donald Doe, and Contemporary Japanese Bamboo Arts (order at www.textilearts. com). The illustrations make it clear that modern bamboo artists have moved beyond crafting containers to creating unique sculptures out of natural materials.

"They're more meant to be an object in and of themselves. If you look on our Web site, there are pieces that are purely nonfunctional," Coffland says.

But he adds, "I love historic baskets. You can't have the present without the past. There's a wonderful continuity of the tradition. Whether something is old or new is irrelevant to whether it touches the heart."

Many of the collectors who buy the work of artists whom Coffland's gallery represents are savvy Westerners who realize their lasting artistic value.

Prices fall in the $10,000- to-$30,000 range. But for that amount, he says, "you can get something stunning that will stop people in their tracks when they come into your home. That's part of the fun of this for collectors."