The turned-wood core finished in polished black roiro lacquer, sprinkled with a gradated ground of kinpun and hirame gold powder and flakes and embellished with larger gold okibirame flakes, and decorated in gold and colored hiramaki-e and takamaki-e with maple leaves and a stream, stylized in the Rinpa manner; the base and interior sprinkled with rounded fragments of shell against a ground of fine ginpun silver powder, some of them partially covered in yellowish lacquer



Comes with a double fitted wood tomobako box, the inner box inscribed outside Momiji ryūsui maki-e ōnatsume uchi ginteki (Tea caddy with maki-e design of fall maple leaves, the interior with “silver mist”) and signed Urushi-shō (Lacquer craftsman Kinsa) with seal Kawabata; and with a paper label inscribed with the same title



The eldest son of the first Kawabata Kinsa was the famous painter Kawabata Gyokushō (1842–1913); the present Kinsa assumed the family title in 2000. The description ginteki (“silver mist”) for the interior of this tea caddy is likely an echo of the same term used by the leading Kyoto ceramic artist Kondō Takahiro (born 1958) to describe a metallic glaze finish that he patented in 2004.