THURSDAY 19 JUNE MORNING SESSION AT 10.30am
(Lots 561-796)
JAPANESE LACQUER
including seventeen pieces from the James Orange Collection
THE PROPERTY OF A LADY OF TITLE
These pieces from an old European collection offer a rare glimpse into the tastes of the generation of connoisseurs who started to acquire Japanese lacquers in the 1880s and 1890s. It is especially remarkable in including the largest group of pieces from the James Orange collection to be offered for sale since that collection was first published in 1907 [see 1 below]. The only other Orange pieces known to have appeared on the market in recent years are an unsigned set of boxes in the Greenfield collection, sold in 1990, and another set of boxes, shown at the Paris exhibition of 1900 and ascribed by Orange to Uematsu Homin but actually by his son Hobi (1872-1933) [see 2 below].
Orange, a resident of Hong Kong, formed his collection during many visits to Japan in the quarter of a century preceding 1907; the introduction to his catalogue states that:
The pieces were procured gradually, many before 1890, but there has never been any attempt at forming an "educational" collection, most of the articles were bought either for their good work or good design and not because of age; I started with the mania for having "pretty" things and think I have succeeded fairly well...My visits to Japan were holidays in a busy life and principally devoted to journeyings in the country, where often specimens of work could be obtained at prices far more moderate than in towns and treaty ports.
It is clear that Orange moved freely in the higher echelons of expatriate society in Japan, counting among the British friends who helped him with the formation of his collection "T.B. Glover, B.H. Chamberlain and J. Conder". Thomas Blake Glover (1838-1911) of Nagasaki amassed a fortune from dealing in arms and other military supplies and was an advisor to the great statesman Ito Hirobumi, while Basil Hall Chamberlain (1850-1935) lived in Japan for thirty-eight years and became the greatest early British scholar of Japanese. The architect Joseph Josiah Conder (1852-1920) is perhaps best known today as the friend and pupil of the eccentric "demon of painting" Kawanabe Kyosai (1831-89) [see 3 below].
Orange's Japanese acquaintance was equally distinguished, including as it did the arts administrator and exhibition commissioner Kuki Ryuichi (1852-1931) as well as two officials of the Department of Fine Arts at the Imperial Museum, Tokyo (later Tokyo National Museum), "Y. Imaizumi and S. Fujiya" who examined the collection he had formed with the help of his compatriots. Avoiding the numerous tourist-traps which had been set up for the unwary foreigner, he made his acquisitions from "private owners and old-fashioned dealers" as well as (despite his remarks above about the "treaty ports") from Nomura of the Samurai Shokai store, No. 20, Honcho, Yokohama, who boasted a
MOST EXTENSIVE COLLECTION of ANTIQUE PORCELAINS,
BRONZES, SILVER LACQUERWARES, and EMBROIDERIES and
NEW CURIOS of every description...[we] most cordially
solicit the esteemed visit and purchase by all ladies
and gentlemen...we... represent all the principal
merchants in the interior [see 4 below]
Orange's frequent short visits allowed him, perhaps, to find a middle course between two categories of visitor described by Chamberlain: "the aesthetic and literary globe trotter [who] would fain revel in a tea-tray existence for the nonce, because the very moment he tires of it, he can pack and be off", and "the foreign employé, with his club, and his tennis-ground, and his brick house, and his wife's piano, and the rest of the European entourage which he strives to create around him in order sometimes to forget his exile..." Certainly he was able to assemble a highly distinctive collection and acquire a wide knowledge of lacquer history, unlike Chamberlain's newcomer who "will take [a lacquer] up for an instant, just glance at it, say "What a pretty little thing!" and put it down again, imagining it to be worth a couple of dollars"[see 5 below].
The collection was published in 1907 in a privately printed catalogue bound in Japanese style, with padded boards and lacquered endpapers; it was reprinted in Yokohama in 1910 to the same standard but on different paper. In 1916 Kelly and Walsh published another catalogue in exactly the same format, again written by Orange, of Bizen-ware ceramics from the collection of Sir Catchick Paul Chater (1846-1926) a leading Hong Kong grandee and philanthropist [see 6 below]. Orange was a friend of Chater for over forty years and in 1924 catalogued the latter's collection of "pictures relating to China, Hongkong, Macao, 1655-1860"; by this time he had moved back to London [see 7 below].
Orange's frequent misspellings of the names of even the most well known artists and techniques confirm that his interests inclined towards "good work or good design" rather than signed pieces; his taste differed in several other respects from home-based British collectors such as Michael Tomkinson or William C. Alexander whose collection entered the Victoria and Albert Museum in 1916 [see 8 below]. He clearly had a liking for the unusual, provided that it was of high quality: examples include the picnic set with an umbrella and musical instruments [lot 580], unorthodox in both decoration and arrangement, and the writing-boxes with shell mosaic or Wakasa-nuri lacquer [lots 588 and 610]. Orange's penchant for rarities is also reflected in two pieces, which show the influence of the 17th century export style [lots 619 and 620] and it would be interesting to know whether these were in fact acquired in Japan or had somehow found their way back from Europe to Hong Kong. But this was no mere assembly of curiosities for, as Orange's own comments on the little circular box [lot 574] show, he was a lover of fine craftsmanship and the present group, some ten percent of the whole published collection, is a fitting tribute to his discernment.
Aside from the Orange pieces, these lots also include a number of remarkable examples attesting to a wide-ranging interest in Japanese lacquer. As well as the expected group of finely worked small boxes in unusual shapes dating from the Meiji period, there are, among other surprises, two rare Namban bottles [lot 621], a classic late 17th century writing-box decorated on the outside with the single motif of a biwa [Japanese lute] and on the inside with pheasants in trees [lot 583]; a rare miniature kobako with a dragon and pearl, containing six smaller boxes each with a different shishi [Chinese lion, lot 564]; and, perhaps most extraordinary of all, a multilobed food-box combining Chinese and Japanese forms with exotic decoration, a hybrid reflecting influences in 17th century Japanese workshops [lot 579].
1 Orange, James, Catalogue of a Small Collection of Japanese Lacquer, Made by James Orange, Hong Kong, (Hong Kong, 1907; reprinted Yokohama, 1910)
2 Eskenazi Limited, The Charles A Greenfield Collection of Japanese Lacquer, (London, 1990, cat. no. 27)
3 Clark, Timothy, Demon of Painting: The Art of Kawanabe Kyosai, (exhibition catalogue, British Museum, December 1 1993-February 13 1994; London, 1993) 28-9
4 Chamberlain, Basil H., A Handbook for Travellers in Japan, (London, 1901), advertising section, 17
5 Chamberlain, Basil H., Things Japanese, (fourth edition; London, 1902), 182-3, 270
6 Orange, James, Bizen-Ware with a Catalogue of the Chater Collection, (Yokohama, Shanghai, Hongkong and Singapore, 1916)
7 Orange, James, The Chater Collection. Pictures relating to China, Hongkong, Macao, 1655-1860; with Historical and Descriptive Letterpress by James Orange, Author of "Japanese Lacquer", "Bizenware", Etc., (London, 1924)
8 Gilbertson, E., et al., A Japanese Collection Made by Michael Tomkinson, (2 vols.; London, 1898)
A LACQUER CRICKET CAGE
19TH CENTURY
Details
A LACQUER CRICKET CAGE
19th Century
The square cover decorated in gold and silver hiramakie, hirame and coloured shell inlay depicting autumnal flowers and plants wrapped in noshi, with ivory bars, the cover interior and base decorated in kinji and nashiji, the base with cabriole feet, (lacquer on the feet cracked and one restuck)
14 x 11.2 x 15cm.
19th Century
The square cover decorated in gold and silver hiramakie, hirame and coloured shell inlay depicting autumnal flowers and plants wrapped in noshi, with ivory bars, the cover interior and base decorated in kinji and nashiji, the base with cabriole feet, (lacquer on the feet cracked and one restuck)
14 x 11.2 x 15cm.