Hand Holding a Lotus Bud

'Hand Holding a Lotus Bud' is among the most distinctive works of Kawai Kanjirō's final period, when he turned increasingly from purely functional vessels toward free-modelled sculptural objects produced for their own expressive sake rather than for domestic use. The piece is a stoneware sculpture of a human hand — cupped in a gesture of receptive offering — closed gently around the form of a lotus bud rising from its centre. Both subject elements draw on layered Buddhist iconography that recurs throughout Kawai's late writings and ceramic work: the lotus as the emblem of awakening, of purity emerging from muddy ground, and of the doctrinal unity of form and impermanence in Mahayana Buddhist thought; and the open hand as the gesture of dāna (giving) and of the bodhisattva's outward turn toward sentient beings. The form is hand-modelled rather than wheel-thrown, with deliberate finger marks visible across the wrist and the upper surface of the hand, and is finished in a quiet matte stoneware glaze that emphasises the gravity and weight of the object as an object. The piece is held in the collection of the Honolulu Museum of Art (accession 6537.1), which acquired it as part of its substantial Mingei-period holdings; the museum has released its photographic documentation of the work to the public domain under a Creative Commons CC0 dedication. The sculpture is broadly representative of the small group of hand-sculptures Kawai produced in the last fifteen years of his life, of which closely related examples are held in the Kawai Kanjirō Memorial Museum in Kyoto.