Aboriginal designs are inlayed into the dark surface of this orb by important contemporary female artist Kitamura Junko enclosed in the original signed wooden box titled simply Hanaire. It is 17 cm (7 inches) diameter, 19 cm (7-1/2 inches) tall and in excellent condition.
Kitamura Junko (b. 1956, Kyoto) is a celebrated contemporary Japanese ceramic artist known for her intricate slip-inlay decoration inspired by 15th-century Korean Buncheong ware. A graduate of Kyoto City University of Art, where she studied under Suzuki Osamu and Kondō Yutaka. Like Mashiko artist Shimaoka Tatsuzo, her work is influenced by Jomon pottery, however her approach is very different. She employs a hand-carved bamboo tool to impress delicate geometric and dot patterns into dark stoneware, inlaying them with creamy white slip to create luminous, textile-like surfaces. The daughter of an abstract painter, Kitamura blends painterly sensibility with rigorous craftsmanship, producing vessels of refined form and mesmerizing detail. Works by the artist are held in many public collections, including the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo; the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, British Museum, Brooklyn Museum of Art, Houston Museum of Art, New York Metropolitan Museum of Art, Musée Guimet in Paris and San Francisco Asian Art Museum among many others.
