Japan · 1920s
A 1920s Japanese export porcelain bottle vase, black ground with moriage-style relief decoration (that raised lion mask and gilded scrollwork) and hand-painted enamels. This is squarely Taisho-period production — Japanese workshops were turning out huge quantities of this kind of ornate black porcelain for Europe and America, often riffing on older Chinese "mirror black" wares that Western collectors already loved.