A fantastic dish covered in red with fine gold designs surrounding a floral disk in sometsuke blue and white by Eiraku Hozen enclosed in an old wooden collector’s box signed on the base. It is 12 cm (5 inches) diameter and in excellent condition, dating from the 19th century.
Eiraku Zengoro XI (Nishimura Hozen, 1795–1854) was adopted into the Nishimura family, who specialized in making braziers for the tea ceremony. >He took the name Eiraku Hozen after Lord Tokugawa Naritsune had awarded him the Eiraku seal (Eiraku, eternal joy) in 1827. Hozen was familiar with all porcelain and stoneware techniques. For the most part, he produced tea ceramics: blue-and white porcelain in the style of the Shonzui ware from the Chinese Jingdezhen kilns in the Ming dynasty; blue-and white ware with overglaze decoration (gosu aka-e); celadons; stoneware with gohon-de glaze; and Kochiware. According to the Met: ‘He was one of the most influential ceramists in Kyoto in the nineteenth century’. Held in the British Museum, the Rijks Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art New York among many others.
