This bowl shows the sparer manner that Meizan’s studio adopted around 1910, when the crowded figure scenes of earlier years gave way to a single, boldly placed motif. The bowl is fluted in the form of a chrysanthemum flower, its scalloped rim edged in gold. Around the outside spreads one autumn maple, its dark trunk curving across the ribs of the body. The foliage, in reds, oranges and gold, spills over the rim into the interior.
Much of the cream ground is left open, so the glaze itself becomes part of the composition and the ribbed form catches the light between the leaves. The bowl is in the Khalili Collection of Japanese Art in London and is dated to about 1910. It is published in the collection’s ceramics catalogue edited by Oliver Impey and Malcolm Fairley (1995), cat. 97, and in Joe Earle’s Splendors of Imperial Japan (2002), cat. 95. Its diameter is 14.8 centimetres.