Description
This exquisite round handpainted bonsai pot by Tōsui carries a miniature rendition of Utagawa Hiroshige’s woodblock print “Night Snow at Kanbara”, part of his celebrated Fifty-three Stations of the Tōkaidō series. The glaze is a luminous field of blues, greys and whites, capturing the hush of snowfall over Kanbara village, with travelers passing through heavy flakes in an atmospheric winter evening.
In Hiroshige’s original, this scene balances strong compositional lines (roofs, mountains, paths) with the delicate falling snow—an interplay of structure and ephemerality. On this pot, the motif is rendered with care, while the subtly variegated glaze enhances the depth and mood of the scene. Because Tōsui use freehand painting techniques, each pot is unique—not only in motif but in how the glaze responds to the firing. The rounded shape of this pot gives the painting a softly curving canvas, while the high-gloss finish accentuates details like the outlines of roofs and tree branches in the snow. Over time, the glaze will mellow with patina and take on more character.
Measurements:
-
Outer (diameter × height): 7,0 × 4,0 cm
-
Inner (diameter × height): 6,0 × 3,5 cm
Features:
-
Artisan: Tōsui (Tsugao Mizuno)
-
Origin: Japan
-
Design: Round glazed pot with handpainted motif
-
Motif: Hiroshige’s Night Snow at Kanbara (from Fifty-three Stations of the Tōkaidō)
-
Finish: High-gloss glaze
About the Kiln (Tōsui):
The pot’s creator, Tōsui (Tsugao Mizuno), is the current generation of Tōsui, a lineage that has produced many masterpieces from the pre-war to the post-war period. The earlier Tōsui pots were mostly glazed, with paintings by Asai Chazan (Shinano Chazan). Tsugao Mizuno studied ceramic painting under Chazan and trained in pot-making under his father, Ryokujian Tōsui. As an artist who inherited both Tōsui’s pot-making techniques and Chazan’s painting style, he introduced Tōsui painted pots to the world.
His distinctive paintings, rich in character, feature landscapes, figures, and birds and flowers based on the Southern School of Chinese painting, as well as series like The Fifty-Three Stations of the Tōkaidō, Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji, Four Seasons Landscapes, as well as various pots for bonsai, colored pots, and medium-sized pots, showcasing his versatile talent and prolific output. Due to the limited production of Tōsui painted pots, their popularity has been increasing in recent years.
