NAGASAKI, MID-19TH CENTURY

This table may have been made for export to the Isle of Deshima in the Bay of Nagaski. Deshima, also known as Dejima, was a man-made island constructed in Nagasaki harbor by the Tokugawa shogunate (1603-1867) in the mid-1630s. It was the only place in Japan where Westerners, first the Portugese and then the Dutch, were allowed to reside from the 1630s to 1856 under the country's policy of national seclusion. A table displaying the same 'lac burgaute' decoration depicting the Dutch station on Deshima was offered anonymously in these Rooms, 16 April 1998, lot 16.