Biography

Seifū Yohei III was born Okada Heikichi in 1851 at Ōshio, Harima Province. He was the second son of Okada Ryōhei, a Confucian scholar and bird-and-flower painter. In 1863 he entered the Osaka studio of the literati painter Tanomura Chokunyū. In 1866 he joined the Seifū potting family of Gojōzaka, Kyoto, on marrying the sister of Seifū Yohei II. He studied ceramic painting and taught himself the processes of production.¹

After Seifū Yohei II died in 1878, and later the young heir, he became head of the family as Seifū Yohei III. He won a bronze prize at Paris in 1889 and a first prize at the third National Industrial Exhibition in 1890. He went on to win a silver medal at Paris in 1900 and a gold medal at the Japan–British Exhibition of 1910.¹

The Tokyo National Museum’s Large Vase with Butterflies and Peonies, made in 1892 at the request of the Chicago exposition’s secretariat and shown there in 1893, uses a white-glazed, relief-decorated porcelain technique he had developed. It was designated an Important Cultural Property in 2017. He worked in Qing-inspired porcelain, celadon and underglaze blue. After his appointment he turned increasingly to Japanese designs and to wares for the tea ceremony. He died in July 1914.²¹

The appointment list based on the Kanpō gazette dates his appointment as an Imperial Household Artist to 25 September 1893. The museum sources describe him as the first ceramist appointed. The Dictionary of Artists in Japan gives the year as 1892, so the sources differ on the date.³²⁴¹

At the fourth National Industrial Exhibition, held at Okazaki, Kyoto, in 1895, he served as an adviser and a judge, and his entries received honorary silver plaques. In the same year he became the first ceramic artist awarded the Medal with Green Ribbon. Of the three porcelain vases that won his silver medal at Paris in 1900, one entered Imperial Household use, one is in the State Guest House, Akasaka Palace, and one is in the East Asian collections of KU Leuven Library. His second son became Seifū Yohei IV.¹

At auction 落札作品

Our auction-records database holds 3 public results for this maker, at Bonhams, from 2011 to 2017. The highest is a blue-glazed porcelain baluster vase, Bonhams, Fine Japanese Art, 2011-11-10, lot 338, at £5,625 (about US$8,975 at the sale-date rate). These are public historical results, not valuations.

A Bonhams essay of 2011 records that Seifū Yohei III was the second son of the Maruyama-school painter Okada Ryōhei, entered the studio of the painter Tanomura Chokunyū in 1866, was adopted by Seifū Yohei II and succeeded as Yohei III on his master’s death in 1878.¹

The same essay says he was “the first ceramicist to be appointed an Imperial Artist in 1893”, which agrees with the appointment table on our Imperial Household Artists page (25 September 1893), and remarks that in the West it was Kōzan “who was usually favoured”. The last point is the cataloguer’s judgement.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.