藤沼昇造「無双」網代編盛籃|Peerless Fruit or Offering Tray (Morikago)

Fujinuma Noboru

2012 · Timber bamboo, rattan, and lacquer · Asian Art

Peerless was made in 2012—the year Fujinuma was designated a Living National Treasure—using diamond-twill plaiting (ajiro-ami) in the center and bundled plaiting with a swallowtail design for the sides and base. It was exhibited at the Japanese Traditional Art Crafts Exhibition that same year. Fujinuma generally creates two types of baskets: refined, finely plaited, traditional works like this one for public exhibition, and rustic, bold, and experimental ones for himself. His signature palette emulates the deep brownish-red color of smoked bamboo, an expensive, rare material usually obtained from old straw-thatched farmhouse ceilings, where smoke absorbed from the hearth below over the course of decades or even centuries changes it to an auburn color.

Artist

Fujinuma Noboru

Date

2012

Medium

Timber bamboo, rattan, and lacquer

Culture

Japan

Department

Asian Art

Credit line

Gift of Diane Abbey, 2019