Biography

Short entry. Open, citable sources for this maker are limited, so we have published only what we can source. It will be extended as research continues.

Hayashi Kodenji I (1831–1915) learned cloisonné in the Owari tradition, which descends from Kaji Tsunekichi. He was taught by Tsukamoto Kaisuke, a pupil of Hayashi Shōgorō, and he set up an independent workshop in Nagoya in 1862, where he trained other craftsmen.²

The Metropolitan Museum records that he founded a Nagoya-area enamellers’ guild in the mid-1880s, opened the first Japanese school for training enamel workers in 1894, and won gold or silver medals at international expositions beginning with Paris in 1889. It also notes that he and his son, Kodenji II, worked together from the 1870s to 1915, so that the hand responsible for a given piece is often impossible to establish.¹

The V&A holds a vase of about 1880–90 with an engraved four-character mark, Aichi Hayashi Ko[denji], on its silver-gilt base plate. He does not appear on the list of Imperial Household Artists.³⁴

At auction 落札作品

Our auction-records database holds 1 public result for this maker, at Christie’s, from 2012 to 2012. The highest is a Cloisonné Vase, Christie's, Masterful Exuberance, Artistic Craftsmanship of Imperial Japan: The Property of a Lady, 2012-05-18, lot 235, at £42,050 (about US$66,515 at the sale-date rate). These are public historical results, not valuations.