Museum Collections

Works from the Meizan studio are held by public and private collections in Britain, the United States and Japan. The list below includes only records we have confirmed on each museum’s own collection website or publications, with accession numbers and links so that every entry can be checked at its source.

Britain 16 objects

United States 5 objects

Japan 3 objects

24 objects in 10 collections are listed below as of 19 October 2026; 21 objects in 9 collections have completed review. The Khalili Collection has no public gallery; it is represented by one of its own Meizan photographs.

The collections

Victoria and Albert Museum, London

The V&A’s three Meizan pieces come from the Japan–British Exhibition in London in 1910 and entered the museum as a gift, credited “Presented by Lieutenant-Colonel Kenneth Dingwall DSO with Art Fund support”. They are a bowl with country views (C.252-1910) and two vases (C.225-1910 and C.231-1910). All three came as a Dingwall gift made with the support of the Art Fund.^1,2,3 The museum’s records describe the standard mark precisely, as “‘Yabu Meizan’ in a square gilt panel”, which makes them an important reference group for the studio’s signature.^1,3

British Museum, London

The British Museum’s record for Yabu Meizan (BIOG3788) lists 8 related objects (checked 22 October 2026); the four entries below cover all 8 (see Open questions). Most belong to a sencha tea service decorated with maple: a teapot, a water-jug with its storage box, and five tea-bowls. It was given by David and Anne Hyatt King through the Art Fund.^4,5 The museum catalogues the service with a body made in Kagoshima and decoration done in Osaka, a clear illustration of how the studio worked.⁵ The ninth object is a small lidded box with a daimyō procession, bequeathed by Captain Collingwood Ingram. Its online record carries a date of “18th–19th century”, which cannot be reconciled with Meizan’s dates and should be read as a cataloguing anomaly.⁶

The Khalili Collection of Japanese Art

The Khalili Collection holds the largest group of Meizan’s work anywhere. Its 1995 catalogue by Oliver Impey and Malcolm Fairley, with a biography by Yamazaki Tsuyoshi, covers 171 earthenwares by Meizan and related makers.⁷ Two bowls illustrate the range. S 30 shows a festival procession with a model of Mount Fuji, and a banner in the scene is inscribed “Dai Meizan”; an almost identical bowl was shown at the Japan–British Exhibition of 1910. S 128, a fluted bowl with a single autumn maple, represents the sparer style of about 1910.^8,9

Walters Art Museum, Baltimore

The Walters’ “Bowl with a Multitude of Women” (49.2280), a six-lobed bowl crowded with figures, has an exceptional provenance. It was shown at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St Louis in 1904, bought there by Henry Walters, and bequeathed to the museum in 1931. The museum notes that Meizan obtained his blanks from Chin Jukan and Kinkozan.¹⁰

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

The Met holds a small bowl with diagonal bands of millefleurs outside and butterflies within (46.39.11), given by Philip A. Rollins in 1946. The museum catalogues its material as porcelain; the V&A, the British Museum, the Khalili Collection and the Ashmolean describe Meizan studio bodies as earthenware or stoneware.¹¹ A second object is sometimes associated with Meizan: an American silver-mounted goblet by Shreve & Company of San Francisco (2012.485). Its Satsuma bowl is described only as “in the style of” Yabu Meizan, possibly from his workshop or by the Kyoto painters Sozan or Kozan. It is not attributed to him.¹²

Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

The Ashmolean’s vase with a bird on a flowering cherry branch (EA1993.12), of about 1910, carries the seal mark “Yabu Meizan”. It was purchased in 1993 with help from the Story Fund. The museum links its open, single-motif style to the Japan–British Exhibition of 1910 and documents the studio’s use of copperplate transfers.¹³

Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin College

A bowl with butterflies inside, attributed to the studio of Yabu Meizan (1904.330), came to Oberlin in 1904 through the bequest of Charles F. and Abigail L. Olney.¹⁴

Osaka Museum of History

The museum in Meizan’s home city holds the principal Japanese research collection. It includes finished works, undecorated blanks, the copper plates used for transfer underdrawings, Meizan’s portrait photograph and his business card.^15,16 Among the works are a large vase with Mount Fuji, wisteria and peacocks; a vase with the shrine at Miyajima; and an early charger with a white elephant and children, marked “Meizan sei”.^15,16 The museum mounted exhibitions on Meizan in 2005 and 2025, and its curator Nakano Tomoko has published the most detailed recent research on the studio.^16,17,18

Museum of Contemporary Ceramic Art, Shigaraki Ceramic Cultural Park

The Tetsuro Tanabe Collection at Shigaraki includes a bowl with birds and butterflies among peonies, dated to the Meiji period. Its mark is recorded as a seal reading only 「明山」 (Meizan), which is relevant to the open question of when the plain “Meizan” mark was used.¹⁹

This list is updated as records are confirmed. Holdings reported elsewhere but not yet checked against the museum’s own records are not listed. If you know of a public holding we have missed, please let us know.