Orange Bowl, Possibly Japanese, Need help identifying Please :-)

Hi,

I found a bowl recently and have not been able to find anything that looks like it anywhere. It is orange with a kind of flower petal effect on the rim. There are also sort of grooves on the outside. The overall effect is kind of like a flower. There is a triple stripe painted on the outside which is black, yellow, and then black again. The inside shows a courtesan or lady and a man in robes with a tree and small table.

Overall it is very interesting although I am wondering if it is western made since the signature is a single character. I believe japanese pieces often have the same simple signature. Sadly there are two chips on the rim, one of which has been repaired.

Does anyone have any insight into this bowl or perhaps you could point me in the right direction? Again I have done extensive Google searching including many pages of images with no success.

Hang on, let me get an expert to take a look!

Great photos.
The bottom looks like it could be 心 in cursive but the top part is difficult to figure out. If you put that character into a search engine and then look at images it will show some cursive examples. The problem is to figure out what the top is.
The piece itself looks like it is a production piece made to look like Satsuma. It could be either Japanese or Chinese, I lean toward Chinese.
If it has chips it probably is worth very little, less than 10$ or so, in my opinion.

Thanks for insight! Yes I normally avoid damaged items but sometimes the price is right :-).

The Crackle graze is a Japanese technique called "Raku", the dark color in the cracks is a result of a second firing with combustible materials, the smoke filling the cracks. Most pieces like this are what's called "Studio pottery", meaning they are the product of a small, sometimes private pottery. Quite often the markers marks are unknown, with such pieces generally selling for less than $100.00