On the surfaces of both hexagonal sake bottle, a dragon and a phoenix are finely drawn in red, and on the back side, a floating scene of auspicious clouds in white and gold is drawn. It seems that whole color tone is red, and the gold color is suppressed and is no splendor. It is the red and fine painting peculiar to Tani Shukei.

size: torso diameter about 7 cm, height about 13 cm

It seems that Tani was inspired by the Chinese old story, which says that if a person has a dragon-like eye and a phoenix-like neck, he will be the most precious one. As it was said that he could do painting at once without looking at the sketch, both the momentum of the brush stroke can be felt from the dragon and the phoenix.

Turning to the back of the dragon and phoenix, in contrast to the red and gold painting on the front, the scene that white and gold auspicious clouds are fluttering in the sky is drawn all over. The power of dragons and phoenixes is shown on the front side, and the skill of Tani can be seen also in the drawing of auspicious clouds floating.

The back name is written in red as “九谷kutani / 秋渓Shukei” on the bright whiteness of the body.

creator of the work

Tani Shukei  谷 秋渓   born in 1888, and died in 1959

Tani was born in Daishoji, Enuma County, and studied porcelain painting from Takeuchi Ginshu (竹内吟秋) and his third son, Hirosawa Roshu (広沢盧秋), and was one of Takeuchi’s disciples. Tani received a character (秋)  from Ginshu (吟秋) for his back name, and was independent of Ginshu and ran a porcelain painting business in Yamashiro, Enuma county.

It is said that Tani inherited many things from Takeuchi Ginshu, and like this work, he created works that were graceful even with powerful brush strokes.