Round Lidded Box (Stoneware)

This round lidded stoneware box, closely related to other lidded-box forms in the Honolulu Museum of Art's Kawai Kanjirō holdings, demonstrates the potter's sustained engagement across his career with the closed vessel as a structural problem — the fit of body and lid, the negotiation of the gallery rim, the visual continuity of glaze across the joint between the two thrown elements. The form is more compressed than the related round box in the same collection, with a wider base and a more shallowly domed lid; the stoneware body is finished in a quiet earth-toned glaze that emphasises the rounded mass of the form rather than offering surface incident or pattern. Pieces of this kind sat at the unselfconscious centre of Kawai's Mingei-period production — domestic ware made anonymously, without signature, for daily use rather than for display — and were produced in modest numbers at his Gojōzaka kiln in Kyoto's Higashiyama district. The piece is held in the Honolulu Museum of Art and has been released to the public domain under a Creative Commons CC0 dedication.