Page 12 - Christie's The Joseph Collection of Japanese Art

METALWORK BY THE KOMAI COMPANY
When, in the middle of the nineteenth century, Japan
was virtually forced to trade freely with the Western
world, the Japanese discarded, with varying degrees of
enthusiasm, the semifeudal state of the previous three
hundred years. Among other changes, an open market
economy was introduced for the frst time. This had a
profound effect on craftsmen (as, indeed, on everyone
else) who had now to make their work without the
support of their patrons the daimyo; to choose their
market and make appropriate goods, which they then
had to sell. Meiji Government policy encouraged the
‘art-crafts’ as demonstrations of Japanese skill. There
was as yet no real manufacturing system; each master
would work with a few assistants. In addition the
government encouraged the participation in the great
international World Fairs that were such a prominent
feature of the time by supporting commissioning
companies who ordered the fnest work from the
craftsmen.
The adoption of Western-style laws and customs led to
such decrees as that banning the wearing of swords in
1876. This, of course, had a spin off in a lack of work
for large numbers of highly-skilled metalworkers.
Unless these metalworkers could adapt to the new
demands of a market that was increasingly dominated
by foreigners, they could not survive in their metier.
It is remarkable how many made this change; not
immediately, perhaps, but gradually.
One of the most characteristic types of Meiji Period
(1868-1912) metalwork is that of the Komai family
of Kyoto, whose highly detailed damascened work is
quite distinctive.
The Komai Company was supposedly founded in 1841,
but it was only when Komai Otojiro I became head, in
1865, that the company began to make the wares for
which they were to become so famous. The workshop,
under the leadership of Komai Otojiro (father and son)
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OF KYOTO
specialised in intricate inlaid work of gold and silver
into iron. The technique favoured by the workshop
was kinsujizogan the inlay of strips of gold or silver
into graved lines on the iron body; later they were
to use nunomezogan which involves the inlay of thin
sheets of gold or silver onto a roughened ground. In a
promotional brochure of about 1915, Komai Otojiro
II (Otojiro I retired in 1906) called his workshop the
‘pioneer of damascene work’ and describes the process
of the lacquering of the characteristic black ground,
which required some forty frings in the kiln and
subsequent burnishing.
Using these techniques, the Komai style passed through
approximately the same evolutionary sequences as did
the styles used by other branches of Meiji decorative
art; elaborated overall pattern-making moved into
elaborate borders surrounding an increasingly pictorial
central motif. Most of these central motifs illustrate
stories from Japanese history or mythology. The
Komai family retains a number of design books in
which can be found drawings for many of their works.
In spite of their great popularity, the name Komai
is rarely found in the lists of exhibitors in the great
World Fairs, because the company exhibited under
the name of the commissioning company Ikeda.
These commissioners would exhibit the work of
a number of companies and it would be they who
also received many awards and prizes. The Ikeda
company are recorded receiving many such prizes,
some of which were certainly for work produced
by Komai. A list of some of Komai’s many awards
from both national and international exhibitions is
recorded in their promotional brochure.
For further details concerning Komai see Malcolm
Fairley, Victor Harris and Oliver Impey, Meiji no
Takara, Treasures of Imperial Japan, Metalwork Part I
(London, 1995).