This vase has an exaggerated ovoid body with a square mouth and four shaped panels: children at play, a landscape, and a bird in a flowering cherry tree among them. The surrounding ground is filled with a profusion of chrysanthemum heads. At the foot, stands of iris rise above a band of floral lozenges.
Bonhams cited very similar vases in the Khalili Collection, published by Impey and Fairley (1995) as nos. 67 and 68. Like the rice-harvest vase in the same sale, it was exhibited at the Columbia Museum of Art in 2014 in ‘Meiji Magic’. It is signed on the underside ‘Yabu Meizan’. Offered at Bonhams, Fine Japanese and Korean art, New York, on 15 March 2017, lot 6257. It realised US$20,000 including buyer’s premium, against an estimate of US$10,000–US$15,000.