Shallow bowl decorated with carps in waves

The inside of this rather large, yet very shallow sake cup is decorated with two carps tossing in dramatically rendered waves. The ground is executed in red lacquer, as is the bottom of the cup, which is inscribed in the middle of its base: Jitokusai Gyokuzan sei and the character kao, rendered in gold hiramakie. Cups of this type served for the festive drinking of sake during wedding ceremonies. The fashionable carp motif – the symbol of auspicious enterprise and abundance – appeared quite frequently on such sakazuki throughout the Edo period and well into the following Meiji era. (See Filip Suchomel and Marcela Suchomelová: A Surface Created for Decoration, Prague 2002, pp. 326–327)