This slender vase, 25 centimetres high, shows the open, pictorial style associated with the studio around 1910. A single bird perches on a flowering cherry branch, and the rest of the cream ground is left almost entirely clear. The restraint is deliberate: in place of the crowded miniature figures of the studio’s earlier work, the painters let one well-observed motif carry the whole design, much as a hanging scroll would.
The Ashmolean Museum in Oxford catalogues the vase as from the Meizan workshop, probably by Yabu Meizan as enameller, with the seal mark ‘Yabu Meizan’ on the base. The museum links this lighter manner to the Japan–British Exhibition held in London in 1910, where Japanese makers presented work tailored to British taste. The vase was purchased in 1993 with help from the Story Fund and is published in the museum’s Jameel Centre online collection.