New Works at Takashimaya Namba: Kawai Kanjirō on an Exhibition Flyer

Flattened Vase on an Exhibition Flyer

This image is not a museum photograph. It is a printed flyer for an exhibition, and the vase is its illustration.

What the Flyer Says

The text reads 「河井寛次郎氏 新作陶器展覧會」, an exhibition of new pottery by Kawai Kanjirō. Below it are the dates, 10 to 15 December, and the venue, the seventh-floor event hall of Takashimaya at Namba, Osaka. The flyer does not print a year. This post has labelled it 1939, but that date is unconfirmed.

The flyer spells the name with the simplified character 寛. Museums and the Kawai Kanjirō Memorial House use the traditional form, Kawai Kanjirō (河井寬次郎).

The Vase

The pictured vase is squat and flattened, with angular shoulders and a small square neck. A blue-grey glaze covers it, and dark red streaks run down from the shoulder towards a reddish foot. A small caption beside the photograph appears to read 呉州扁壺, naming it as a flattened vase (扁壺).

Kawai made many flattened vases in the late 1930s. The Kawakatsu Collection list at the National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto includes many from 1938 to 1940. Among them is a 呉州扁壺 dated 1939, the same name the caption appears to give, but we could not match this vase to any entry.

The Potter

Kawai Kanjirō (1890 to 1966) was a founding member of the Mingei (民藝, folk craft) movement. For other pieces labelled as his, see our posts on Kawai Kanjirō's 1942 ceramic dish and his 1963 ceramic plate. A bowl labelled as his, known only from a black-and-white photograph, is in Kawai Kanjirō's 1947 tea bowl.

Kawai's flyer invited people into a department store to see new pots. Ours is a smaller invitation: EngiCrafts' matte black pieces deliver plain, wood-fired forms to your door.