An unusual fresh-water jar for the tea ceremony by Living National Treasure Tokuda Yasokichi III (Masahiko), enclosed in its original signed wooden box and accompanied by the original black lacquer lid. The gently swelling porcelain body provides a restrained ground for Tokuda's extraordinary command of color: brilliant turquoise encircles the shoulder before descending through emerald green and a luminous band of yellow into an increasingly deep blue-black that envelops the lower body. Rather than forming a hard boundary, the colors bleed softly into one another, producing the remarkable sense of light emerging from within the glaze for which Tokuda's mature work is celebrated. A fine network of crazing is visible through the paler passages, lending subtle texture to the otherwise exceptionally smooth surface, while the simple black lacquer lid provides a quiet counterpoint to the intensity of the glaze. It measures 14 cm (5-1/2 inches) in diameter and 20.5 cm (8 inches) tall.
Tokuda Yasokichi III (Masahiko, 1933-2009) was born the first son of Tokuda Yasokichi II who had been adopted as a teenager into the Tokuda family. Masahiko graduated from the Kanazawa school of arts, and took up apprenticeship under his grandfather and father Yasokichi I & II. Well versed in orthodox Kutani design, he broke with tradition developing his own unique style titled Saiyu in the 1970s. By broadening his spectrum with this new style of Kutani ware he garnered considerable attention. In 1986, he was named a Bearer of Important Intangible Cultural Assets by Ishikawa Prefecture (local version of Living National Treasure) and a decade later was designated Living National Treasure in 1997 for his supremacy in the use of Kutani glazes. Yasokichi III, His works are held by the Polk Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art New York, The British Museum, the Victoria & Albert Museum, the Smithsonian, the Indianapolis Museum of Art and Kanazawa Contemporary Museum of Art among many others.
