Dear Martin,

Greetings and thank you for calling upon the experts at Mearto to evaluate your fine Japanese Ginbari pigeon's blood enamel vase. I am gobsmacked by the size.

This is certainly an early 20th century example of the art, 7" to 10" examples are rather common, a couple of 12" examples have gone to auction and sold between $800 and $900USD but there is nothing even close to being comparable size to this example that has ever been offered on the secondary market.

As to the provenance.... I would love for it to be possible! The way to narrow your research is to look for photos of the interior of the Japanese Pavilion at the World's Fair. They likely had a cloisonne exhibit of which a selection of ginbari wouldn't be uncommon and begin by trying to find this piece or a mention of it in a photo pr publication. The size is exceptional and is just the sort of thing which would have been made as an exhibition piece. In researching the Chicago World's Fair for another project I was made aware of the fact that at the end of the fair some of the countries sold the wares they brought so they did not have to pay transport to ship them home. In this case this piece is from the World's Fair, I assume this could be possible.

Valuing this is difficult, let's exclude the provenance for a moment because it needs to be proven to really take it into account. I am assuming this piece is free from chips, cracks and dents and isn't made by a known artist, in which case, I would tentatively place the value of this piece at between $1500 and $2500USD, but because it is massive and is likely one of the largest there is, there is a chance my estimate is low. If you secure the provenance, my estimate is too low.

Let me know if you have any follow-up thoughts and thank you for your submission.

Sincerely,

Erin-Marie