7. Miyagawa Kozan

The Makuzu business in Kyoto was continued by Zen-ō Jihei Kōsai (1846–1922), who took the name Miyagawa Kōsai, and maintained the traditional line of tea utensils. Kōzan’s period in Bizen had coincided with the Meiji Restoration what had brought about a collapse of the old regulation and financing of kilns. Kōzan was at the forefront of the successor policy of industrial development, which included crafts, called shokusan kōgyō.  In 1870 he set up the Makuzu workshop in Yokohama, producing Satsuma-style ceramics for a growing Western market. His workshop was large and progressive, quickly developing and producing a wide variety of styles as fashions changed. This was also a period in which modern pieces were deliberately made and sold as unsigned old Satsuma. It is considered a fact that the Makuzu workshop participated in the fraudulent trade up to 1876 at least. After the publication of  Frank Brinkley in The Chrysanthemum magazine of   1883 allegating Kozan as a notorious counterfeiter Kozan always carefully signed all his work.  Pieces are marked as Kozan, or Makuzu, or both, brands that can be drawn or impressed.

Some of his early export works used exaggerated, high-relief decoration (known as taka-ukibori or sculptural relief) and these became very popular with the Western market in the 1870s. It seemes that Kozan stopped this kind of work in the early eighties, and handed over the studio to his son Hanzan, while  he focussed more and more on the development and application of monochrome glazes, and later on the most beautiful cristalline glazes and new colours  what he became famous for. Kōzan continued to show innovative design and experiment with wonderful glazes until his death.  He exhibited at the Centennial Exposition of 1876, in Philadelphia including high relief vessels presaging later work. Kōzan also showed much development of lines quite independent of the Satsuma ware at First National Industrial Exposition of 1877 in Tokyo and was still successful at the 1893 World Columbian Exposition in Chigago, where other Japanese ceramics was not received well. In 1896 he was made an  Imperial Household Artist (Teishitsu Gigei-in).