A haunting white vase scratched with autumn grass patterns by legend Koyama Fujio enclosed in the original singed wooden box titled Shiro Kakiotoshi Hanaike. A nearly identical work held in the collection of the Museum of Modern Ceramic Art in Gifu was recently exhibited and published at the Shigaraki Togei no Mori Museum, figure 51, page 60. The vase is 19 cm (7-3/4 inches) diameter, 19.5 cm (just under 8 inches) tall and is in excellent condition. <br> Koyama Fujio (1900–1975) ceramic scholar and potter, was a director of the Japan Ceramic Society and chairman of the East Asian Ceramic Society of Japan. Born in Tamashima, Okayama Prefecture, on March 24, 1900, Koyama attended Hibiya High School and later enrolled at Tokyo University of Commerce (now Hitotsubashi University), but withdrew in 1923. After varied early experiences, he devoted himself to pottery, then to the study of ancient ceramics. In the 1930s and early 1940s he undertook pioneering fieldwork on kiln sites across China, notably identifying the Ding ware kiln ruins in 1941. His A Draft History of Chinese Celadon (1943) remains highly regarded. After the war, Koyama worked as an investigator at the Tokyo National Museum and the Cultural Properties Protection Commission, contributing to the designation of cultural properties and editing major ceramic reference works. His six-volume Oriental Ceramics (1954, Bijutsu Shuppansha) was translated into multiple languages and is internationally known. He received the 10th Minister of Education’s Art Encouragement Prize in 1960. Koyama also played an important role in organizing ceramic exhibitions, serving as advisor to the Nezu and Idemitsu Museums, and as vice-director of the Japan Kōgei Association. From the 1970s, while continuing international lecturing and research, he established a kiln in Toki and resumed making ceramics, holding a “Ten Years of Pottery” exhibition in 1974.<br> Through his scholarship, writings, and practice, Koyama Fujio shaped the modern study of East Asian ceramics and bridged historical research with contemporary ceramic art. Ceramics by him are held in the collections of the Aichi Prefectural Museum of Art, Boston Museum of Fine Arts, British Museum, Brooklyn Museum, Hagi Uragami Museum, Idemitsu Museum of Art, National Museum of Asian Art in Washington, D.C., Okayama Prefectural Museum of Art, Seattle Art Museum and Tokyo National Museum of Modern Art among many others.
