Item Description 宮下善爾 Miyashita Zenji（1939–2012） This elegant stoneware flower vase, titled Yuisaibun Tsutsugata-Vase (結彩文 包瓶 — "Knotted Colour Design, Cylindrical Vase"), is a work by Miyashita Zenji, one of Kyoto's most celebrated and internationally collected ceramic artists of the postwar era. The form is a tall, slender rectangular column — clean, precise, and architecturally upright — rising from a broad, flat square base to a wide, open mouth. The geometry is quietly bold: four planes of near-equal width, the edges softly rounded, the overall silhouette restrained and contemplative. Yet this austerity serves as a perfect foil for the decoration, which dances across the lower body with spontaneous lyrical energy. The surface is covered in a subtly textured off-white glaze over a warm red-brown clay body (shudei — 朱泥), which flashes warmly at the unglazed foot and along the lowest edges, scattered throughout with dark iron-brown spots that emerge naturally through the glaze. Into this quiet ground, the artist has drawn two intertwining lines of flowing, calligraphic brushwork in contrasting colors: one in cobalt blue, the other in soft pink-white. The lines loop, curl, and cross one another in graceful, unhurried arabesques — evoking the image of kessai (結彩), a knotting of colors, a binding of hues into a living, lyrical composition. There is a deep sense of play and intimacy in the design, combined with the assured hand of a master who has nothing to prove. The piece bears the artist's zen (善) seal on the base, and comes with its original wooden storage box (tomobako) bearing the artist's inscription, and the artist's full printed biography document. Size Height: 22.0 cm Width: 7.1 cm Depth: 7.0 cm Weight 600 g Condition The piece is in excellent condition with no chips, cracks, or repairs. All surface variations in glaze and clay body are fully intentional characteristics of the artist's technique. Artist Profile 宮下善爾 Miyashita Zenji（1939–2012） Miyashita Zenji was born in Kyoto in 1939 and came to represent one of the most distinctive voices in postwar Japanese ceramics. He studied under Kusube Yaichi, a member of the Japan Art Academy, and pursued an extraordinarily wide range of ceramic techniques. His work in neriage (marbled clay), saiden (colored clay inlay), and other complex surface techniques rendered natural landscapes and inner psychological landscapes with remarkable softness and luminosity, always striving to make the hard ceramic medium appear almost fluid and alive. He was accepted into the prestigious Nitten (Japan Fine Arts Exhibition) eighteen times, and served as juror for the Kyoten (Kyoto Exhibition) and other major exhibitions. He was a member of Nitten, the Japan New Craft Artists Federation, and the International Academy of Ceramics (I.A.C.). His work entered the permanent collections of major institutions including the Tokyo National Museum of Modern Art, the Harvard University Art Museums (Arthur M. Sackler Museum), the Saint Louis Art Museum, and Cornell University and Kansas State University in the United States. He died in Kyoto in 2012 at the age of 72.