LATE 19TH CENTURY

Details

A set of sixteen small wooden masks
Late 19th century
Polychrome painted, each a variant on well-known historical gigaku or nyorai masks, treated in an exaggerated manner, each inscribed on reverse in Japanese with red colour indicating the name or type of the mask, the polychrome paint slightly stained to give the masks a somewhat antique appearance; together with three further masks of the same type but not matching the set
Size ranging from 6.5 to 9 cm (19)

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Lot Essay

Eight masks after examples in the collection of the Horyuji temple; three gigaku masks from the temple of Todaiji (both in nara); one after an old mask in the Chikubushimayashiro-shinto temple in Izumo; one mask after a seven hundred year old Nyorai buddha; and three after old masks from Kitoke, Yongaku and Butoku

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