A TEBAKO ['HANDY-BOX']

SIGNED GYUHOSEI SAKU, MEIJI PERIOD (19TH CENTURY)

Details

A TEBAKO ['HANDY-BOX']
Signed Gyuhosei saku, Meiji Period (19th Century)
Of standard rectangular form with rounded corners and a flat lid; black lacquer ground with irregular squares of polished shibuichi-nuri imitating the silver-coated paper of a Japanese screen; decoration in polychrome togidashi-e embellished with gold and silver hiramaki-e and foil mosaic; interior dense gold nashiji with decoration in gold and silver hiramaki-e and foil mosaic and crushed shell; underside gold nashiji, signed in gold hiramaki-e Gyuhosei saku [made by Gyuhosei]

Exterior with a girl coiffured and dressed in the style of the period from about 1690 until 1720 and a black cat with two butterflies fluttering above its head; sides with stylised snowflake and other designs; interior with scattered cherry-blossoms and the character tsuki [moon]
4.5/8 x 8.3/8 x 10in. (11.7 x 21.3 x 27.4cm.)

Provenance

R. Matsumoto Collection
Charles A. Greenfield Collection

Literature

Eskenazi Limited, The Charles A. Greenfield Collection of Japanese Lacquer (London, 1990), cat. no. 38
Glendining and Co., auction catalogue of the R. Matsumoto collection (London, 5-6 May 1955), no.39, pl. V
Metropolitan Museum of Art, Metropolitan Cats (New York, 1981), p. 103
Andrew J. Pekarik, Japanese Lacquer, 1600-1900: Selections from the Charles A. Greenfield Collection (New York, 1980), cat. no. 38, fig. 49
Harold P. Stern, The Magnificent Three: Lacquer, Netsuke and Tsuba (New York, 1972), no. 66 (boxes)

Exhibited

New York, 1972, Japan House Gallery
New York, 1980, Metropolitan Museum of Art

Lot Essay

The young girl's stance and richly decorated garments, as well as the silver background, are probably copied from a late 17th- or early 18th-century folding screen. While the many inro with scenes from illustrated books which have been documented by Heinz and Else Kress and Julia Hutt suggest that there was indeed a tradition of ukiyo-e figural designs in lacquer which started around 1800 or earlier, it is clear that ukiyo-e motifs were also popular during the Meiji period, as seen in a number of inro clearly datable on technical criteria such as the use of a very bright kinji ground to the later 19th century1 and a set of ukiyo-e style designs for tea-boxes included in the Onchi zuroku, a collection of craft design sketches commissioned by the Meiji government for objects to be exhibited in international and domestic exhibitions2. The deliberately historicist style of this box, reflecting Western admiration for earlier Edo-period painted screens (an admiration that was also catered for in bronze)3, suggest that it should probably be assigned to the closing decades of the 19th century.

1 Theodor Helmert-Corvey, Inro: Das Ding am Gurtel [Catalogue of inro in the Heinz and Else Kress collection] (Bielefeld, Germany, 1997), cat. nos. 82, 83 and 113

2 Tokyo Kokuritsu Hakubutsukan [Tokyo National Museum], Chosa kenkyu hokokusho Onchi zuroku [Research Report on the Onchi zuroku] (Tokyo, 1997), accompanying CD ROM, 23-24

3 Joe Earle, Splendors of Meiji: Treasures of Imperial Japan, Masterpieces from the Khalili Collection (St. Petersburg, Florida, 1999), cat. no. 331, a bronze based on a figure from the celebrated Hikone screens exhibited at Paris in 1900; another bronze based on the screens is in the Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore. For the Hikone screens, see Takeda Tsuneo et. al. (ed.), Nihon byobu-e shusei 14: Fuzokuga - Yuraku, Tagasode [Survey of Japanese Screens 14: Genre -Entertainments, Kimono Screens] (Tokyo 1977), cat. no. 21

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