EDO PERIOD, CIRCA 1830

Nagasaki, the technique of colorful shell inlay on a black lacquer ground, was produced under Dutch instruction in Nagasaki from the late 18th century, hence where the name derives. The colorful decoration of floral and bird motifs follows the conventional Nagasaki designs of the period.

This secrétaire was probably produced for the Dutch or broader North European market as its shape is closely linked to continental examples. It may have been made on the island of Deshima in the Bay of Nagasaki. 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 Portuguese and then the Dutch, were allowed to reside from the 1630s to 1856 under the country's policy of national seclusion.

For a similar example in The Peabody Essex Museum, Salem (E 79452), see Oliver Impey and Christiaan Jorg, Japanese Export Lacquer 1580-1850, Amsterdam, 2005, p. 220-221, no. 535.