Knowledge
A reference for Meiji art
Guides to the makers, techniques, institutions and literature of the period. Every fact is linked to its source, and interpretation is labelled.
Reading Meiji
Telling Meiji work from later work: what the evidence shows.
Read →Makers 作家
19 makers and studios with sourced biographies and chronologies.
Read →Techniques 技法
Twelve techniques, from musen cloisonné to nunome inlay.
Read →Imperial Household Artists 帝室技芸員
All seventy-nine appointees, 1890–1944, with dates.
Read →World’s Fairs 万国博覧会
Eight expositions, 1873–1910.
Read →Meiji Timeline 明治年表
The era year by year.
Read →Glossary 用語集
107 terms in romaji, kanji and English.
Read →Library 文献
Books, catalogues and open databases.
Read →Research standards
The four-part record, attribution terms and how we score.
Read →Provenance and compliance
Chain of ownership, due diligence and protected materials.
Read →Auction records
Cited public auction results.
Read →Museums
Public collections with Meiji masterworks.
Read →Image credits
Sources and licences for every image.
Read →How to use this reference
The guides are written from cited sources: museum catalogues and databases such as ColBase, the Japanese and English Wikipedia articles on individual makers, JAANUS for terms, and the lot essays of Bonhams and Christie’s. Footnotes link to each source. Where sources disagree, both are given. Where a passage is our reading rather than a documented fact, it is marked Interpretation.
The maker pages also hold each maker’s public auction results, with photographs credited to the houses, and the technique guide illustrates each process with an object whose catalogue names it.
Where to start
Readers new to the period may begin with Reading Meiji, on dating and attribution, and the techniques guide. The Imperial Household Artists table and the World’s Fairs pages explain two institutions that appear in almost every biography. The Journal carries longer essays on single subjects.
Revisions
Guides are revised as sources are added, and the date of the current text appears at the foot of each page. Corrections and references are welcome through the enquiry form. We add a source only when it can be checked by the reader.