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.

Ando Jubei was a Nagoya cloisonné maker. English Wikipedia gives his dates as 1876–1956, and a 2026 Bonhams catalogue gives 1876–1953, so the sources differ. Along with Hayashi Kodenji, he dominated Nagoya’s enamelling industry in the late Meiji era. He is described as the period’s most prolific maker of presentation wares commissioned by members of the Imperial family, and he exhibited at the Japan–British Exhibition of 1910.¹⁵

Kawade Shibatarō headed the company’s works from 1902. Under his direction it exhibited at world’s fairs and was chosen as an official supplier of cloisonné to the Imperial family. Japanese Wikipedia lists the Ando Cloisonné Company (安藤七宝店) of Sakae, Nagoya, among the present-day makers of Owari cloisonné. Neither Ando nor Kawade appears on the list of Imperial Household Artists.²³⁴

English Wikipedia says that plique-à-jour (shōtai shippō) came to Japan after Ando bought an enamel by André Fernand Thesmar at the Paris Exposition of 1900. Kawade then analysed it in order to reproduce the technique.²

At auction 落札作品

Our auction-records database holds 2 public results for this maker, at Bonhams, from 2012 to 2024. The highest is a fine cloisonné enamel and partial plique-à-jour square bowl, Bonhams, Fine Japanese Art, 2012-05-17, lot 333, at £145,250 (about US$230,032 at the sale-date rate). These are public historical results, not valuations.

Bonhams catalogues a square bowl as by Andō Jūbei and worked in cloisonné and partial plique-à-jour, with a carp in gold wire at the centre. This is one of the few lots in our database in which the house names plique-à-jour.¹

Facts in this section are as stated by the auction houses in their lot essays, footnoted below. Where they differ from other sources we say so.