Page 18 - Christies March 15 2017 Fujita Museum

Yohen tenmoku teabowl, Southern Song dynasty (1127-1279), National Treasure, Turtle-shaped incense container, Kochi-ware, Ming dynasty, 17th century, 10 cm. long.
Fujita Museum. 明末清初 交趾大龜香盒

南宋 建窯曜變天目茶盌 國寶

The original collection formed by Fujita Denzaburō numbered over seven thousand items (some Fujita Denzaburō, 1901.
say ten thousand), recorded in twenty-fve volumes of what was originally a much larger number 藤田傳三郎，攝於1901年。
of inventory books dating from 1904, the Kōsetsusai zohin mokuroku (Inventory of the collection of
Kōsetsu; Kōsetsu was one of the collector’s go, or art names). The remaining volumes of the inventory All images courtesy of the Fujita Museum of Art.
were lost. In 1929, in the wake of a worldwide depression that hastened the dispersal of many old
collections in Japan, and after the Fujita-owned bank had failed, the family deaccessioned four
hundred important works at a dealers’ auction on the Fujita property. The sale, including two days of
previews, was supported by a long list of eminent art dealers, represented frst and foremost by the
biggest players in Osaka, Yamanaka & Company, as well as Toda Rochō.

At that 1929 sale, the Fujita family parted with the Chinese tea-leaf storage jar known as Chigusa
for ¥2,000. In 2009, the Freer Gallery of Art in Washington, DC purchased Chigusa at auction at
Christie’s, New York, for $662,500, well above the estimate. (Fujita had purchased the jar in 1888 from
a Kyoto chanoyu family, the Hisada, who treasured it for 250 years.) There were three additional Fujita
auctions; altogether, the family sold some 860 pieces between 1929 and 1937.

Today, the collection formed by Fujita Denzaburō and his sons still numbers fve thousand works of
Asian art, including masterpieces of Japanese art, as well as Chinese painting, bronzes, sculpture,
ceramics (most famously, a stunning Chinese tenmoku teabowl with oil-spot glaze that is now a
designated National Treasure) and decorative arts such as lacquer, jade and textiles. There are nine
National Treasures and ffty-one Important Cultural Properties. The 1972 publication Masterpieces of
the Fujita Museum of Art singles out nearly four hundred of the most important pieces from the Fujita
Collection, including some of the Chinese works of art that are here ofered for sale by Christie’s.

Julia Meech

Consultant

16 IMPORTANT CHINESE ART FROM THE FUJITA MUSEUM