Suspended flower basket

This basket is of a type modeled after images of Chinese baskets in the paintings of Yanagisawa Kien (1706–1758), also known as Ryu Rikyo. Chikuunsai I first saw these paintings at the end of the Meiji period (1868–1912), and he drew upon them to create a signature style using the intricate Chinese-influenced plaiting techniques at which artists of the Kansai region excelled. If you look carefully, you may see auspicious Chinese characters plaited into the six sections of the lower register.