Japan Marks - Miyagawa "Makuzu" Kozan |
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MIYAGAWA, KOZAN "MAKUZU" (宮川香山) (眞葛) |
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| (1842-1916) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| http://kozan-makuzu.com/ | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 Makuzu Kozan depiction of Nemuri Neko in high relief work as a finial on jar |
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| Miyagawa (Makuzu) Kozan (1842-1916) was appointed artist to the Japanese Imperial household and was one of the greatest potters of the Meiji Era. He came from a long line of potters based in Kyoto and took over the family business in 1860, at the age of nineteen. In 1870 he opened a workshop in Yokohama and seems to have arrived at his artistic height during the 1880’s. Pieces signed "Makuzu Kozan" in various hands seems to have been made right up until the first decades of the 20th century (Resource - Wikipedia, Jan-Erik Nilsson). | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Majolica and fayence:
Italian, Sicilian, Majorcan, Hispano-Moresque and
Persian,
Arthur Beckwith, 1877. Makudzu Kozan, Yokohama: porcelain vases with relief figures, such as crabs with movable eyes, curiously and well executed; fine pdte-sur-pdte, modeling and splashed colors cleverly combined in a vase representing the gods of Wind and Thunder; pedestal, curiously wrought like coral-work; also earthenware, which began in imitation of Satsuma, and added figures in relief, and intricate perforated work. Moderate prices. |
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U.S. Centennial Commission International Exhibition,
1876, Reports and Awards, Vol. III, Groups I and II,
Francis A. Walker, 1880. No. 12. T. Miyagawa, Ota, near Yokohama. No. 13. Y. Suzuki, Yokohama. All the work of the same maker, Makudzu-kozan. An important collection, in porcelain and earthenware, of vases of various forms and sizes; some also in biscuit porcelain, and several with objects in full relief; also specimens of tea-wares, well made and decorated. Some biscuit decoration, of elaborately-wrought figures, foliage, etc., is mixed effectively with the ordinary colored and glazed ornament; also a vase and pedestal in imitation of white coral, very ingeniously wrought; a pair of vases decorated with grotesque figures of the deities of wind and thunder in low relief, richly colored; also a vase in imitation of coral, glazed, with figures of animals skillfully executed; a pair of jar-vases (with biscuit flowers of life-size, some in full relief) inclose in their interior other glazed and decorated vases; another pair is ornamented with imitation palm-leaf fans, very cleverly represented, the handles being in relief, and the ribs shown through the texture by a process similar in ingenious effect to that of pate sitr pate. Earthenware, a modern imitation of Satsuma ware. A set of three large pieces, the centre one being a "koro" or incense-burner, with recesses in the sides, in which are figures of some of the seven deities and their companions, are elaborate and excellent specimens of great skill in potting; they are also richly decorated. Price, #150 for the set; cheap considering the remarkable character of their workmanship and decoration. Pairs of vases, 15 inches, painted in low relief with fish, crabs, etc., admirably delineated, $15 per pair. Makudzu Kozan, Ota, near Yokohama, Japan. No. 272 DECORATIVE EARTHENWARE. Report.—Commended for great ingenuity and skill in potting; success in difficult manufacture accomplished in a short lime. The various processes of this porcelain manufacture are extremely remarkable and ingenious, several of the pieces being apparently unique in character and of very difficult execution. The earthenware, also, shows originality of conception and complete mastery of difficult processes of moulding and potting. Prices very low for the quality. This collection is worthy of study for invention and great ingenuity and skill in potting. |
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Keramic art of Japan,
George Ashdown Audsley, James Lord Bowes, 1881. Musashi Another kiln, at which large quantities of Keramic wares have been made for export, was established in 1860 at Ota, a suburb of Yokohama, by Suzuki Yasubeye, a Tokio merchant, who induced a clever potter, named Kozan Miyakawa, of Makudzu, in Kioto, to undertake the direction of it. He obtained clay from Satsuma, and his earlier productions were imitations of that faience; it is, however, easy to detect the difference between these counterfeits and the real Satsuma, as we have pointed out in our chapter on the latter ware. More recently, Kozan has produced some very remarkable works of a different style; at Philadelphia in 1876, and also at Paris in 1878, he exhibited a great variety of faience decorated with ornaments in full relief, many of them certainly not of artistic value, but all of them notable examples of skilful potting. A numerous body of painters reside in the city of Tokio, and are justly celebrated for the beauty of much of their work. They are remarkably skilful, and much of their work is characterised by great freedom and high artistic feeling. In purely ornamental designs they form quite a school, and so marked are their designs in character and treatment that they furnish a ready clue to the locality of their painters. Large quantities of porcelain and faience are sent from Hizen, Mino, Owari, Kioto and Satsuma for decoration, and amongst the specimens illustrated in this Work we may point to the basin in Plate XXIV as an instance of Kioto faience painted in Tokio. |
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Japan: its architecture, art, and art manufactures,
Christopher Dresser, 1882. At Ota is produced the celebrated Makudzu ware, which, in its way, has never been surpassed. Indeed, some pieces of Makudzu ware are so wonderful that they appear to be tours de force rather than works produced for the ordinary purposes of trade. We first became acquainted with Ota pottery at the Philadelphia Exhibition, where two indented spill vases, with lotus flowers in the indentations, attracted much attention. The esteem in which these were evidently held by those who saw them in America led the Makudzu potter to experiment for new effects; but in most of his trials he used modelled flowers upon his vases. When I visited the pottery at Ota he was busily engaged upon some fine works of this character, as well as with the formation of large old (!) pots with which to delude the American and European buyer. But it was at the last Paris Exhibition that we saw this great potter in his strength; and he certainly showed himself as one of the giant ceramic workers of the world. |
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 Another Makuzu Kozan high relief work of Nemuri Neko finial on koro censor jar |
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The Chrysanthemum, Volume 3, Frank Brinkley,
1883. Ota-yaki. Faience similarly decorated and destined entirely for the foreign market is now produced in largo quantities at Ota, near Yokohama. A factory was established there in 1872 by a merchant to whom the export of counterfeit SaUuma ware seemed to promise a certain fortune. With this idea he summoned from Kiyoto a potter called Kayama, and supplied him with materials procured from Kishiu and various other places. The prince of Japanese faiences refused, however, to be copied in this haphazard fashion,and though a good deal of the spurious ware was successfully disposed of, the attempt had to be abandoned in the end as a commercial failure. Kayama subsequently re-opened the factory on his own account, and soon established a reputation for plastic ability, so that his productions now constitute a large item in the Keramic exports of Japan. The clay is procured from Kiyoto; and the ware is called Makudzu-yaki, from the name of his native place (Makudzu-ga-hara). Almost every conceivable object in nature may bo found moulded in high relief on his vases: sages, storks, sparrows, bamboos, reptiles, fishes, and many another subject often more quaint than artistic. No fault can at any rate be found with them on the score of deficient dexterity or painstaking. Not a few are perfect marvels of patient skill, and have consequently received a large share of public patronage, though in truth that can scarcely be counted true art which chooses such an exceedingly fragile material for the production of works so easily and completely marred by accident. For this pottery of Ota not only is, but suggests the idea of being, a ware with every frangible, and no enduring, quality. It has a crude, ill-stoved, and insufficiently tempered appearance, and for this, if for no other reason, will assuredly one day fall into disfavour. Porcelain is also quite as much in Kayama's line as faience, and in addition to a quantity of specimens of both natures decorated after the fashion of the Yedo School, he has turned out a good many porcelain vases in which surface tints of skilfully graduated intensity produce effects that are at once rich and delicate. It often happens, however, that a man's best eflorts are least appreciated, and in the American market to which most of Kayama's creations are carried, his elaborately moulded pieces, overloaded as they are with ornament and consonant with no creed of aestheties, find a much readier sale than anything else he has attempted. |
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 High relief work of Nemuri Neko finial on peony decorated koro censor with handles |
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The industries of Japan: together with an account of
its agriculture, forestry, arts, and commerce.
From travels and researches undertaken at the
cost of the Prussian government, Johannes Justus
Rein, 1889. Ota-yakl, Makudzu-yakl. In 1872 a merchant, Suzuki of Yokohama, established a factory in the neighbouring town of Ota, with the intention to manufacture Satsuma and other Faience, as well as porcelain, and especially to meet the demand of the foreign market for decorative pieces. He secured a potter by the name of Miyakawa Kozan, from Kioto, as director. Vases were manufactured principally, and Amakusaishi and several clays from the neighbouring Musashi were used as raw materials. Later, the business is said to have passed to Miyakawa, and the products have often been designated after his former residence, Makudzu-ga-hara, in Kioto. Miyakawa displayed an uncommon activity, and was inexhaustible in the invention and employment of new designs of decoration, especially in high relief. His productions, which during the last fifteen years have been exported in large quantities and attracted much attention at the great International Industrial Exhibitions, betray many departures from good taste, together with some very original and beautiful designs. There were, for instance, at the Paris Exhibition large vases of long, cigar shape, with a striped glaze having the colouring of the Awata-yaki, around which large rusty anchors were represented in high relief, and on them little goblins sitting. There were other vases which were made with a lumpy or knobby surface in the lower part, resembling that of a wall which has been plastered with pasty cement mixed with little gravel stones. Open-work basket and bamboo weaving was also imitated with great exactness. All this impressed the judges in such a manner, that they added to the distinctions already received in Vienna and Philadelphia, the gold medal, as a recognition of the work of the exhibitor. The Falence of Ota resembles porcelain very closely, and excels all other Japanese Delft-ware in hardness and firmness. Its colouring is somewhat between that of Satsuma and Awata-yaki; the factory, however, has produced no articles which are distinguished by polychromatic painting or which eclipse the better products of Kagoshima and Awata. |
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 Pre 20thc depiction o Nemuri Neko Sleeping Cat, signed. Notice the similarities with Makuzu sleeping cat finials . |
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| Makuzu Kozan vase with relief work depicting nemuri neko under peony blossom | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 1895 Ad for MIYAKAWA KOZAN, MAKUZU PORCELAIN MANUFACTURERS, FUJIYAMA-SHITA, OTA, YOKOHAMA. FINE PORCELAIN MADE TO ORDER. |
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A Book of Pottery
Marks, W. Percival
Jervis, 1897: One of the first potters of Japan of present age. First established in Kioto (Kyoto), but afterwards removed to Ota near Yokohama. His underglaze colors on porcelain are unrivaled, (regarding marks) Nos. 1 and 2 are generally signed in blue; 3 and 4 are either impressed or signed in blue. |
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| Advertisement from Handbook of Japan and Japanese Exhibits at World's fair, St. Louis, 1904 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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MAKUZU KOZAN BLUE RIBBON MERIT ARTIST TO HIS IMPERIAL MAJESTY'S HOUSEHOLD. ART OBJECTS Porcelain, China-Ware Manufactory, Decoration a Specialty 1631 Minami Ota Machi, YOKOHAMA, JAPAN. |
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1901 Advertisement MAKUZU KOZAN Member of the Imperial Art Commission FUJIYAMA SHITA OTA, YOKOHAMA. MANUFACTURER & DEALER IN FINE ART PORCELAINS. ORDERS PROMPTLY EXECUTED. MODERATE CHARGES. |
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The following marks from Japan - Its History, Arts, and Literature by Captain F. Brinkley, Volume VIII, 1902, Marks numbered 814 thru 827 YOKOHAMA (MUSASHI), NOTE: some marks by Makuzu Kozan and others by Miyagawa Kozan and Dojin Kozan. Click here to see pdf file Yokohama Mark No. 814-827 Page 16, Page 30 |
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| Signatures of Makuzu Kozan | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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