This bowl by Yano Keisen is emblazoned with the characters Beiju indicating it was made for someone 88 years old. He produced this commemorative tea bowl for the 88th birthday of Toyama Mitsuru (1855-1944), from whom he received the art name Keisen. The calligraphy is signed Keisen, and impressed into the side of the bowl is the seal of Toyama Mitsuru. A very interesting piece of Japanese history, the bowl is 13 cm (5-1/4 inches) diameter, 9 c (3-1/2 inches) tall and in excellent condition, enclosed in a red lacquered festive wooden box. There is an original firing flaw in the rim visible above the seal.
Yano Keisen was born in 1872 in Kōzōji-chō, Kasugai City. He studied under Masuda Shiun at the Hakusui Kōjuku in Nagoya and Kobori Hisatada at the Seishin Juku. At the age of twenty-two, he was adopted into the Yano family of Honji, Seto City. While employed at the Hatayama Village Office, he was awarded the Order of Merit. Thereafter, he entered a life devoted to ceramics, beginning the hand-building of Shino tea bowls and adopting the art name Soboku (“rustic simplicity”). He produced this commemorative tea bowl for the 88th birthday of Toyama Mitsuru (1855-1944), from whom he received the art name Keisen. In 1952, he created a tea bowl to celebrate the 77th birthday of Takashina Rōsen, chief abbot of Eihei-ji, and was granted the character “Sen,” thereafter also using the name Keisen (with alternate characters). In 1955, encouraged by figures including Kawabata Yasunari, Osaragi Jirō, Toriumi Seiji, and Muramatsu Shōfū, he held his first solo exhibition. In 1957, he presented a collaborative exhibition in Nagoya with Mushanokōji Saneatsu and the printmaker Munakata Shikō. In 1959, on the occasion of the marriage of the Crown Prince and Princess Michiko (now the Emperor and Empress), he presented a self-made Shino tea bowl. He passed away in 1965 at the age of ninety-four.
