SIGNED NATSUO, MEIJI PERIOD (1889)

Details

A Fine Tetsubin [Iron Ewer]
Signed Natsuo, Meiji Period (1889)
Of cast and chiselled iron, with short spout, broad shoulder, swing handle and separate lid, the shoulder cast and chiselled in shishiai and kebori techniques with a the face and paws of a tanuki [raccoon dog], signed on the back Rokujuni-so Natsuo kokusu [chiselled by Natsuo, aged sixty-two], with fitted wood box dated 1889 and crediting the casting to Nagoshi Yagoro and the chiselling to Kano Natsuo
6 1/8in. (15.5cm.) high including handle; 4½in. (11.5cm.) diam.

Literature

Published:
Tabako to Shio no Hakubutsukan [Tobacco and Salt Museum], Meiji no chokin: Kano Natsuo to sono jidai [Decorative Metalwork of the Meiji Period: Kano Natsuo and his Age] (Tokyo, 1987), no. 25
Yoshida Teruzo and Ikeda Suematsu, Kano Natsuo meihinshu [Collected masterpieces of Kano Natsuo] (Tokyo, 1972), no. 76
Miyake Teruyoshi, Natsuo Taikan, Kano Natsuo sakuhinshu [Collected works of Kano Natsuo] (Tokyo, 1990), cat.no. 210

Special notice

VAT rate of 5% is payable on hammer price plus buyer's premium

Lot Essay

The design alludes to the tale of the Bunbuku chagama [Tanuki tea-kettle]. A poor peasant decides ask a tanuki to transform itself into a tea kettle, which he sells to a local temple. When a novice monk takes the kettle to a river and scours it with sand, the tea kettle cries out, 'It hurts! Scour more gently, boy!' The kettle is eventually put on to boil, whereupon it turns itself back into a tanuki and scuttles away. Natsuo wrote in a diary entry dated 28 June 1889 that he had started work on making an iron tanuki ewer for a Mr Shimomura, later adding that the whole process took him four working days. In a subsequent conversation he explained that the hardness of the cast iron made the job particularly difficult and wore out several chisels; it would be impossible, he said, to perform such a feat a second time.1 The leading iron- and bronze-caster Nagoshi Yagoro of Tokyo submitted three boxes of bronze samples for display at the Vienna exhibition of 1873.2

1 The information regarding Natsuo's work on the kettle is based on the two works cited above under 'Published'
2 Yokomizo Hiroko, 'Meiji shoki no hakurankai o kazatta kinzoku [On metalwork shown at international expositions in the early Meiji period', Museum, 492 (March 1992), pp. 48-42, p. 31 (no. 482)

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