Flower basket

Iizuka Rokansai—younger brother of Iizuka Hosai II—was one of the most important artists in the history of bamboo art, effecting its segue from artisanry into artwork and defining a conceptual framework of three categories for its interpretation. This tall, flaring basket is an example of Rokansai's semiformal category (the other two categories are formal and informal). Before plaiting, the bamboo strips were scraped down the center between nodes and then dyed. The dye penetrated only the scraped areas, creating a two-tone stripe.