An Old Suiseki from the Kamogawa

Tags

Kyoto, Rai San'yo, Suiseki

It is hard to believe we haven’t posted since who knows when but life has been busy as we moved across the country to be closer to family.

We haven’t been to Japan in a few years which means our collection of Japanese suiseki has been sparse. Our time has been spent collecting stones from Northern California rivers and about those we hope to post soon.  Today, we want to share with you a stone we purchased from Kyoto, Japan.

One of the suiseki sites we take a peek at a few times a week is Mr. Kawai’s located in Kyoto.  We visited him a few years ago and he is not only a delightful individual he has a great collection of stones for sale in his second floor shop above his flower store.  We had seen this stone on his site, but unfortunately the photos were small and didn’t reveal how beautiful this stone actually is.  We were fortunate to have Dr. Tom Elias and Hiromi Nakaoji post a photo of this stone on their VSANA Facebook page after their return from Japan last month.  When we saw it we immediately went back to Mr. Kawai’s site to see if it was available.  After a few days of negotiations on price, we purchased the stone.

Kamogawa (28 x 10 x 12.7cm)

This is a remarkable stone and without question one of the nicest in our collection. It reminds us of the stone said to be owned by Rai San’yo a very long time ago and reportedly is from the Kamogawa . The name of this stone is Yamato Murayama (“Mountains of the Kanto Plain”) and is 27.0 x 10.0 x 8.0 cm.

Rai San’yo stone

We wonder if our stone wasn’t modeled after the Rai San’yo stone. What do you think?  Let’s take a look at the other views of the stone and its daiza.

Unfortunately the daiza isn’t marked so it is impossible to tell who made it, but their craftsmanship was superb as seen by viewing the detail on it’s edges. Click the photo for a much larger version.

So what about the stone being worked. It is clear to us that it has as we can see marks on the stone. Does it diminish it for us? Not at all.  The Rai San’yo stone was worked as well and it is still shown at the Nippon Suiseki show in Japan.  Clearly because it is an important stone, has a provenance and it quite beautiful.

We only know the stone was in a collection in Japan for a very long time. We have no idea what was the cause for selling it but often stones exchange hands at the end of one’s life.  Regardless of the cause we are quite happy it has a home with us.