Clearly created for the export market, this teapot bears little resemblance in form to the tea wares of Japan; the vertical, cylindrical shape is entirely European. The decorative vocabulary, however, of iris and lotus flowers, crabs and bamboo, and the techniques of patination and inlay, are in the Japanese idiom.

Shōbi Eisuke, known in the West as Jomi, was an extremely successful bronze worker based in Kyoto. He received commissions from the Imperial Household Agency and exhibited frequently at international fairs, winning prizes in Paris in 1878 and 1889. The Shōbi workshops employed more than 85 independent craftsmen in and around Kyoto, and Eisuke worked with his son, also named Shōbi Eisuke (active 1881–1911).

This pot and accompanying cups (RCIN 54953) were gifts to Albert Edward, Prince of Wales from his sons Albert Victor and George, selected during their two-week stay in Japan in October and November 1881. The published accounts of their voyage record several encounters with Japanese metalworkers and dealers. In Tokyo on 28 October the brothers ‘started off to some curio shops … we got some very nice old ivory carved netsukes … and little pieces of old bronze and modern metalwork at Mikawaya’s’. A week later in Kyoto, they ‘visited the metalworkers, and saw some beautiful specimens of bronze and silver work with small raised flowers on the surface ... There are two or three in Kiôto [sic] whose modern work is as good as the best antique, only of course expensive, as the workmanship is first-rate and takes much time and patient skill’. They were also visited at their accommodation by salesmen from Kyoto and Nara who displayed their wares, among them specimens of bronze, and from whom Prince George wrote ‘we choose some of these to take home as presents’.

Text adapted from Japan: Courts and Culture(2020)