This lot includes this Satsuma Ware Gold Gilt Bowl with hand-carved wooden base. The scene depicted featured three Samurai, two in the foreground wearing armor - yoroi - made of small pieces of leather and or lacquered metal that were connected with silk laces and cords, making it flexible and easy for the samurai to wear in battle. The Satsuma with which most people are familiar is late Satsuma or nishikide. It is a distinctive Japanese pottery present during the Meiji period (1868 to 1912). The ceramic example has a warm cream, ivory to beige background with a crackled glaze. It bears over-glaze designs in orange, green, blue, red, or gold decoration. One of the more distinctive features of this Satsuma is the crackled glaze and the overall painted decoration. The typical Satsuma ware is a yellowish earthenware usually decorated with a minute decoration with Japanese figures, expressive faces or detailed oriental landscapes, or sometimes embellished with vivid dragons in relief. This ware is in fact an export product specifically designed in the mid 19th century to cater to the western export market. The Japanese themselves had very little interest in this ware. From around the 1890s to the early 1920s more than 100 artist at least twenty larger studios or factories were producing "Satsuma" wares destined for the European and American export markets. Most high quality export 'Satsuma' is easily recognized by its finely crackled glaze and by the fact that its yellowish earthenware body does not "ring" when tapped. The production soon spread to several cities such as Kagoshima, Kyoto, Tokyo, Nagoya, Osaka, Kobe, Kanazawa, and Yokohama and elsewhere throughout Japan, from the Meiji period (1868-1912) up until today. In spite of very good quality work, many good pieces are simply unmarked such as this piece. Genuine Satsuma is native to Japan and never anywhere else including China. Genuine Satsuma never has English writing on it; no “Made in…,” no “Hand-Painted,” no “Genuine…,” and no “Satsuma” anything. This Satsuma Ware Gold Gilt Bowl is in very nice overall condition, no obvious marring observed. Measures 4.25"D x 9.75" diameter approximately, weight approximate 2lb, 2oz