Japanese Treasures That Left Experts And Owners Stunned | Antiques Roadshow UK

The Japanese today actually acknowledge how amazing some of these export ware pieces were and will pay a lot of money for it. Really? Fantastic! Oddly enough, this was made in the same place as that. It's from Kutani in Kaga province in Japan, about 1880. What's so nice about it is the subject matter. Yes. You've got this wonderful fat... I'm not even sure he's an owl, I think he's an owlette, he's a baby owl, isn't he? Yes, I think so too. And what's nice though is the way he's sitting there sort of looking at his lunch. Yes. He's about to put this claw down and go, oh breakfast, lunch, lovely. You liked it too, did you? I think it's absolutely lovely. Yeah. Particularly the shape, you want to touch it all the time. You want to touch it, yes. And of course the colour around the back is quite breathtaking. Yes. This particular green colour, very characteristic of Kutani, as is this mixture of black on green. Again, something you would expect to come from there. Well, I think it's a marvellous thing. Where did this one come from? Well, that was left to my mother. She'd visited the house of an elderly couple who did collect antiques and admired it. In fact, as she went past it, she stroked it and didn't meet them again for many years. But when the wife died, she left it to my mother-in-law. How wonderful. Because she'd admired it. Oh, isn't that nice? I think that would fetch somewhere between £1,800 and £2,500. Well, we must continue to keep it on the high shelf. Well, it's a good looking bowl. It's a shame about the box. Have you got anything better at home? Yes, there is a very nice box. But it was inaccessible. It's in my cousin's attic. Why don't you keep it in it? Because it's on display on a bookcase most of the time. Oh, I see. The bowl is actually on display. Yes. Well, tell me where you got it. Well, it doesn't actually belong to me. It's my mother's. And it came down through her side of the family. It was my great-great-grandfather's. He gave it to his wife in 1901. And he bought it in Japan on one of his voyages. He was on one of the shipping lines from Liverpool. At first sight, what we have is a European shape. This is a completely un-Japanese idea, this serrated rim. It's almost like a cut glass bowl. And then this stem is peculiarly un-Oriental. It's completely and utterly European in style. But then the painting. Now, what painting? This is absolutely stupendous. This is the bowl that ought not to be sort of standing up on the sideboard. But it's the sort of thing you really have to look at almost with magnifying glass. It's very detailed. But the painting on here, these peonies in this garden, is absolutely gorgeous. And the gold has been put on at the very end. And nothing has been spared here. Beautiful thing. The whole thing then takes place against this dense iron-red milefiori ground. And then we come around this side. We have an out-of-doors party of young ladies, a child, out enjoying themselves in a pine grove. It's beautiful. Absolutely stunning. But then, inside, that's where it really happens. That is superb painting. In fact, you have a painter in the garden being watched by a number of children and an old man. And there is his pot of brushes. Fantastic detail. And all of these clouds done in this minute pointillist gilding technique. It's a superb tour de force. I suspect it was an exhibition piece. I really do. I think it's such high quality. I understand that it was shown in an exhibition and it won a prize. Oh, really? Yes. Which exhibition? Do you know? I don't know which exhibition. But the exhibition was on at the time when my great-great-grandfather was there. And he quickly had a look and he decided to buy this as it had won a prize. Well, that's a pretty good thing to buy, isn't it? Because this is absolutely top of the range. The Japanese today actually acknowledge how amazing some of these export wear pieces were and will pay a lot of money for it. So I would think today a bowl of this caliber is probably going to be worth between three and five thousand pounds. My great-uncle traveled on the Grand Tour of the Far East sometime between 1900 and 1920, I suppose. Yes. And he brought back a great number of artifacts. Right. The first thing any visitor to Japan has to bring back is some souvenir of Mount Fuji. Of course. We got a porcelain vase and we got a piece of enamel. Which of these two would you go for? The vase. The vase, this little vase? Yes. I think that is absolutely exquisite. Well, it's very nicely done and it is covered in a celadon glaze with a bit of slip, just giving that suggestion of snow on the cap of Fuji. And there is the potter's mark. Well, you've chosen a very modest piece. That would not cost you more today than maybe 30 pounds. So would you have paid 35 pounds for this, maybe? Possibly, yes. I'm not as fond of that. If you look around the edge of this, you'll see that it has an outline. The enamels are laid into an outline, or cloisons, as they're called. Technically, this is cloisonné, but the central part of the theme is done completely without wires. This is what the Japanese called muzen. And there's one particular exponent of it, a man called Namikawa Susuke, who's a highly prized worker in muzen enamel. I suspect this is by him. And if it weren't for the fact that there is a bruise on the corner, this little tray would not cost you 35 pounds, but today would have cost you somewhere in the region of 2,000, 3,000 pounds. But that bruise does make a difference. I'm afraid so, yes. So knock off a nought. It's still more than your charming little vase. Choose a piece of Satsuma ware. Which of these two do you prefer? The one with the wisteria inside. The one with the wisteria? Well, let's have a look first at this one. That's a cherry, I think. And here you have a scene of people outside a large wheeled vehicle. I mean, this is a sort of Lord's Mare procession in Japanese version, but this is not the one you want. That's the one I wouldn't choose. You want this one? I would choose the other one. Why? Because of the wisteria inside. This is the bit you like? This is the part I like, yes. The sparrows flying through wisteria. That's right. I have that in my garden and it looks beautiful. It is gorgeous. So it's sentimental, the Iliad. Well, if I tell you of these two pieces, you prefer the second. Yes. If I tell you the first of these... Is the more valuable. ...is worth somewhere in the region of 200 to 300 pounds. Yes. The second one is by a man called Yabu Meizan. This is the one you've chosen. That's the one I would like, yes. This is worth somewhere between two and three thousand pounds. Really? Fantastic. You've got the right piece. I got the right one. It's a family piece. It's just been handed down through the family and it's ended up with us. It's actually Japanese and it's the class of wear which is popularly called Satsuma, which is a high-fired earthenware with a crackled glaze, and the crazing on it is actually part of it. It's not a defect. It developed really in response to Japan opening up to the West, which he did in 1853-54. And the Satsuma-type wears, one of the great makers was a man called Sobei Kinkazan. He was part of a long family of potters. Now Kinkazan was interesting because he had this factory turning out this stuff, and if you just went in and bought a piece then you went away again. If you said, have you got any really good bits, you were taken to his own house and he had a decorating studio attached to his house where all the best stuff was done. So it was a two-tier manufacturing process. This is one of the top pieces. This is a really knockout piece. It's in a form of sort of a tea canister, but I don't think it was ever meant for serious use. On the bottom we would expect to find and indeed have got his mark, Kinkazan, and then the bottom character is Tsukuru, which means made. Round it, what appears to be just simply decoration, but actually it's in very stylised characters. It says Dai Nihon, which is Great Japan, and then Kyoto. The decoration on here is just breathtaking. It is just unbelievable that somebody could take a brush with enamel colours on it and do this extraordinarily detailed painting. The scenes are absolutely typical. We've got a woman and her daughter there. We've got a mountainous landscape. We've got a cockerel perched on a blue rock. We've got a couple of children. Another landscape with figures going up to a sort of house in the mountains. And here, which is very nice, a sort of dog-like character, which looks more like a cross between a dog and a cat. The sort of grey clouds, which appear to be up here, up close, that's every single dot is painted with the single hair of a bush, and that's the actual gold, and that's continued over here. Now, Kinkazan, one of his introductions was this dark blue enamel, which he then gilded. And the problem is with it, the gold doesn't like sticking on it very much, and he's usually worn off. Here, it's with very slight wear. It's still in pristine condition. The nice thing about this one is that some of the panels are actually signed by the painter, and you've got at least two painters on this piece. And this one is one I can read. It says Oshizan. It's, I think, a remarkable find. I mean, it's as good as a piece of Satsuma as I've ever seen on the roadshow. Really? Where do you have it at home? Stuck in my husband's office. Whereabouts in his office? I don't like the sound of offices. Offices sound like crashing about, telephones, files, on a shelf. It's safe, is it? Well, I thought so. I'll put it in a glass cabinet when I get home. Put it in a glass cabinet when you get home, because it's worth eight to ten thousand pounds. Blimey! Thank you very much. Thank you for bringing it in. What you're looking at are three Japanese prints. Now, Alexandra Aguilar, you're our painting specialist, and you're showing us these pictures because we have to rate them in order of value. Basic, better, best. And they seem very different. Kick us off. Tell me about that one. Right, so this one is quite exciting. It's a very rare design. It's unrecorded, and it's by an artist called Utagawa Hiroshige. Now, Hiroshige, together with Hokusai, they are the most famous 19th century Japanese woodblock printmakers. Hokusai, of course, famously did these beautiful prints of waves, of Mount Fuji, that we know so well. Exactly, yes. So, this is Hiroshige, and he was famous for his landscape print. But this is very different from what we're used to. It's all about bats. There are bats everywhere on the pictures, hidden in the composition. Bats were a very lucky symbol in Japanese art. And what period are we talking about? So, this is first half of the 19th century. This one in the middle, obviously completely different. We are going into the 21st century. This is by an artist called Toko Shinoda. She passed away earlier this year, but she was 107 years old. She was really a fantastic artist. She spent many years in New York in the 50s, and she interacted a lot with artists such as Jackson Pollock or Mark Rothko. So, her art was influenced by this modern expressionism from the States. She's a very interesting artist, and her pieces can be seen in big collections all over the world. Okay. And this, I love this. The composition is really fantastic. It's very dynamic, isn't it? What are these shadows in the background? They are actually ghosts. They are seeking revenge against one of the characters on the boat, who is just in the middle, in red. So, this print is by an artist called Utagawa Kuniyoshi, who is also from the 19th century. And this print dates from about 1850. So, what's the range of values that we're talking about? Right. So, one print is worth about 2,000 to 300 pounds. The next one is about 2,000 to 3,000 pounds. And the third one is between 20,000 to 30,000 pounds. Well, exactly. I love the murmur that goes around. Okay. Well, look, help me out. Gosh. What do you think? I think the furthest one with the four different pictures is the best. And then the artist who lived till 107. Yes, that's the one in the middle. Yeah. And I'm afraid the boat, the last, even though I like the boat, the best, actually. You think that's the basic? The basic. So, what makes you think the collection of four prints over there is... I don't know. It just had the bats' influence. Just the bats did it for you. Okay. Fair enough. I won't question you any further. What about you? I'm going for more of this end one because of the colour. It's stunning, isn't it? Yeah, it's stunning. I think that's the only reason. Let me see. What do you think? I'm actually going to go for the middle one. That's the most valuable because it's so unusual. So, we've got three different options for the best one here. I mean, we don't get a lot of this on the road, so you will flummox me. I'm going to say the one in the middle is basic. It is the most modern. I'm going to go for that. Then the bats is the better. And this one, just because I like it the best, is the real humdinger worth £20,000 to £30,000. I mean, the colours are just gorgeous, aren't they? Right. Well, you've got one right. The basic one is this one. Is it? Because when it was first published, people didn't really like it. So, although it's by Hiroshige, it's only worth £200 to £300. Right. Now, so the better is this one. As I said, there are many collections, many museums around the world who are starting to collect her works. She was really a trailblazer for Japanese women artists in the 20th century. So, yes, she would be £2,000 to £3,000. Her paintings can sell £30,000 to £40,000. Now, you were right. Your favourite one is the most expensive one. This one would be worth probably between £20,000 to £30,000. The condition is really fantastic. The colours are so bright. They are. Also, the artist, he's well known for his ghosts, his monsters. So, yes, Utagawa Kuniyoshi, the master of ghosts. It's probably worth £20,000 to £30,000. Right. You see, I thought it was basic, better, best. But then I thought, oh, you'd never make it that straightforward. Oh, I should have gone with that. And I should be testing you all on how to pronounce those names after we've finished. Oh, so interesting. Thanks so much, Alexandra. Really enjoyed that. Thank you.