Antique Japanese Satsuma Style Koro in Rust Red with Shishi Lion Finial

This Japanese export Satsuma koro is a proper showstopper of a piece, made for Western buyers in the early 20th century when Europe could not get enough of Japanese decoration. A shishi lion, the guardian dog of Japanese folklore, crouches on the lid with a paw on a pierced brocade ball. Two more form the handles, each gripping a red ring in its mouth, with a raised cord and tasselled bow tied beneath as if the whole thing were wrapped as a gift. Around the bowl, samurai warriors in patterned armour stride across a landscape of gilt clouds, all built up in moriage enamel so the surface feels textured under your fingertips. The palette is rust red, mustard yellow and cream on a fine crackle glaze, with gilding warmed to a soft bronze by age.

The koro stands 30 cm tall and 22 cm wide, raised on three curved feet, so it holds its own on a mantelpiece, console table or hallway chest. We love it against a plain wall where the colours can do the talking, or grouped with a couple of blue and white pots for that collected, well travelled look. The bowl and feet are sound. The lid has lived a fuller life: it carries several small chips to the rim and an old crack which has been repaired, visible on the inside as shown in the photographs. Seen from the front and above, the lid reads beautifully and the finial is complete, so this is honest wear on a 

century old piece rather than anything that spoils it on display. We have priced accordingly.

Koro were originally incense burners, and the pierced ball beneath the lion's paw is a nod to that purpose, though this one has almost certainly been an ornament since the day it arrived in Britain. The base is unmarked, as is typical of Satsuma exported here rather than to America, and shows the cream earthenware body and crackle glaze that mark it out from later porcelain copies. Fill it with dried hydrangea heads, use it to hide a small plant pot, or simply let it be the piece that guests ask about first. Workshops produced pieces like this in quantity for department stores and dealers, which is why so many British homes had one on the sideboard. Fewer have survived with all three shishi intact.