Lot Essay
As Andrew Pekarik points out1, it is not easy to establish the relationship between the different parts of this elaborate design. Because pheasants are together during the day but separate at night they are emblematic of loneliness, a sentiment that is expressed in countless early poems and is perhaps the underlying theme of the design on the interior. Pekarik also suggests that the water-dropper, in the form of a koto, might be a clue to the connection between the common poetic themes of geese, rivers and mountain villages and the less familiar motifs of waterfalls and aqueducts. One poem that brings some of these elements together, by Ki no Tsurayuki (c.868-946 A.D.), goes as follows2:
Matsu no oto o As the autumn wind
koto ni shiraburu tunes the sound of the pine trees
akikaze wa to my koto's notes
taki no ito o does it also gently pluck
yasugete hiku ran the streams of the waterfall?
The majority of suzuribako lids with mercury mechanisms also include an ivory or horn waterwheel, but this rare example relies for its effect solely on the sight and sound of the liquid metal as it runs through the glass container, a process which can take up to fourteen seconds. Apart from the omission of the waterwheel, the design of the lid interior exhibits some parallels with other suzuribako incorporating a mercury feature, for example the 17th-century piece offered in these Rooms on 16 June 1999 (lot 175).
The name Chobei, carved under the ink-stone, was always used by members of the Nakamura family of ink-stone carvers, considered the finest in Japan from the 17th to 19th centuries3.
1 Andrew J. Pekarik, Japanese Lacquer, 1600-1900: Selections from the Charles A. Greenfield Collection (New York, 1980), pp. 29-30
2 Shinpen Kokka Taikan Henshu Iinkai [Revised Kokka Taikan Editorial Committee], Kokka taikan [A Compendium of Japanese Verse] (Tokyo, 1983), vol. 1, 17 (Fugawakashu), no. 1542 (1543)
3 Spink & Son Ltd., Japanese Lacquer: Miyabi Transformed (London, 1997), cat. no. 11.
Matsu no oto o As the autumn wind
koto ni shiraburu tunes the sound of the pine trees
akikaze wa to my koto's notes
taki no ito o does it also gently pluck
yasugete hiku ran the streams of the waterfall?
The majority of suzuribako lids with mercury mechanisms also include an ivory or horn waterwheel, but this rare example relies for its effect solely on the sight and sound of the liquid metal as it runs through the glass container, a process which can take up to fourteen seconds. Apart from the omission of the waterwheel, the design of the lid interior exhibits some parallels with other suzuribako incorporating a mercury feature, for example the 17th-century piece offered in these Rooms on 16 June 1999 (lot 175).
The name Chobei, carved under the ink-stone, was always used by members of the Nakamura family of ink-stone carvers, considered the finest in Japan from the 17th to 19th centuries