A BRONZE VASE, SIGNED KIRYU KOSHU KAISHA SEI (MADE BY THE FIRST JAPANESE MANUFACTURING AND TRADING COMPANY) BENEATH THE "DOUBLE-MOUNTAIN" MARK OF THE COMPANY, MEIJI PERIOD, LATE 19TH CENTURY

For the design see Toyojiro Kida, Kiritsu Kosho Kaisha, The First Japanese Manufacturing and Trading Co. (Kyoto, 1987), p.218, plate 298.

Suzuki Chokichi (1848-1919, Art name - Kako) was one of the leading and original members of the Kuritsu Kosho Kaisha, a company set up by the Japanese Government to promote export in crafts after the exhibition in Vienna in 1973. Suzuki Chokichi had grown up in Tokyo, served a five year apprenticeship before setting up in business on his own at the young age of seventeen. He was at the heart of the national project to redirect Japanese traditional industries towards the export market and exhibited at Philadelphia (1876) and Paris (1878). As a well known name in his field he was commissioned by various agencies of the Japanese government to create work for public display and was appointed an Artist to the Imperial Household (Teishitsu Gigeiin) in 1896. Suzuki Chokichi exhibited the famous twelve bronze hawks, considered by many as amongst the finest examples of the Meiji period art in existence, now in the collection of The National Museum of Modern Art Tokyo, at the 1893 Chicago exposition.