Bamboo baskets for the traditional flower-arranging art of ikebana were particularly popular in Japan in the late Meiji, Taisho and Showa periods, or from around 1900 - 1950's. Most of the baskets that are offered here for sale date from this period. The four objects by Hayakawa Shokosai I, the first basket-maker to sign his works, were made during the reign of the emperor Meiji and date from the nineteenth century.

Where signed, photos of the signatures are shown. Many of the baskets also retain their original, signed, wood storage boxes (tomobako). If not specifically mentioned, there was no box or the box is lost and not included.

Information on the work and lives of most of these renowned basket-makers may be found in the index, text, or biographical index in the definitive and magisterial Japanese Bamboo Baskets: Masterworks of Form and Texture, by Lloyd Cotsen, Cotsen Occasional Press, Los Angeles 1999. Lloyd Cotsen's collection of over one thousand Japanese baskets has since been donated to the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco.