Focus on Khalili Imperial Garniture and explore the Creation and exhibition.
During Japan's Meiji era (1868 to 1912), the government actively promoted Japanese arts and crafts abroad by exhibiting the best examples in the world's fairs that were held in America and Europe. The first world's fair to exhibit Japanese art works in its Fine Arts section was the World's Columbian Exposition and among them was this garniture with a central incense burner. It had been inspected by the emperor who approved it for the exhibition. The three vases are decorated with enamel and silver wire on a copper surface. At the exposition they were described as "the largest examples of cloisonné enamel ever made". The eight feet, eight inches (264 cm) height quoted in the 1893 catalogue includes their pedestals made of keyaki wood. The height of the tall vases is 172 cm (five feet, eight inches). The incense burner is topped by an eagle in bronze.A team of craftsmen, led by Shirozayemon Suzuki of Yokohama and Seizayemon Tsunekawa of Nagoya, took more than four years to construct the three items. The painting was done by nihonga artist Araki Kanpo (1831–1915) who was a member of the Japanese Imperial Household's art committee and of the Royal Society of Arts, London. Kanpo was later recognised in 1900 as an Imperial Household Artist. Viewing the garniture in Tokyo before its shipping to Chicago, the Anglo-Irish scholar Francis Brinkley predicted that the exposition would not display it in the Palace of Fine Arts because of its political symbolism. Despite this prediction, it was displayed prominently in the East Court of the Palace as the ethnologist Hubert Howe Bancroft describes in his Book of the Fair.
Yokohama Imperial Household Artist Chicago Araki Kanpo Palace of Fine Arts Japanese Imperial Household Nagoya Japanese cloisonné world's fairs Meiji era incense burner Francis Brinkley nihonga the emperor Royal Society of Arts Hubert Howe Bancroft enamel cm World's Columbian Exposition Japan inches garniture keyaki