Vase with Lobster Motif

Born Shirayama Kitarō to a samurai family in Kanazawa, Japan, the artist later known as Kataro Shirayamadani moved to Tokyo as a young man. There he was hired by the Deakin Brothers Co. of Yokohama to be part of the Japan Village, a traveling group of over 100 Japanese people who traveled through the United States in the 1880s. They demonstrated various arts and crafts of Japan and sold Japanese products during the Japan Craze, a period when Japanese arts were at the height of popularity in North America and Europe.

The Japan Village was part of the Cincinnati Industrial Exposition of 1886. There, Shirayamadani met Maria Longworth Nichols Storer, founder of the acclaimed Rookwood Pottery Co., who had long admired Japanese ceramics. She hired Shirayamadani, who worked for Rookwood from 1887 until his death in 1948, only returning to Japan from 1915–1925. Highly regarded as a painter, his naturalistic decorations covered the entire ceramic vessel body, and were not designed to be seen from a single viewing angle. His imagery was most often flowers and birds—this lobster subject is quite rare.