A SUZURIBAKO [WRITING-BOX]
A SUZURIBAKO [WRITING-BOX]

EDO PERIOD (18TH CENTURY)

Details
A SUZURIBAKO [WRITING-BOX]
Edo Period (18th Century)
Of standard rectangular form; black lacquer ground with large-size gold hirame; decoration in gold and silver hiramaki-e and takamaki-e with details in gold and silver e-nashiji and foil mosaic; rims of lid gold lacquer with fine gold mura-nashiji; interior gold nashiji with decoration in similar techniques to the exterior but with a mercury stream; sides and rim of ink-stone and rims of brush-trays gold lacquer; ink-stone signed Kenkon seiseki Nakamura Chobei [Nakamura Chobei, the purest stone in the universe] with a kao [cursive monogram]; gold water-dropper; the base sparse gold nashiji

Exterior with a pheasant perched on a crag beneath a pine tree; interior with rice-paddies beneath the slope of a mountain down which a stream flows into an irrigation channel, the river represented by a stream of mercury visible through a glass container [see illustration on page XXXXX]; the brush-trays with simple rock and plant designs; the water-dropper in the form of a koto [plucked musical instrument]
1 x 8 x 9.1/8in. (4.6 x 21.6 x 23.2cm.)
Provenance
Thomas E. Waggaman Collection
George D. Pratt Collection
Charles A. Greenfield Collection

When first published, this fine suzuribako was in the possession of the Washington real estate broker and auctioneer Thomas E. Waggaman, part of whose collection had earlier been catalogued by the celebrated British-American New York art dealer Edward Greey (1835-88)1. Other works from Waggaman's collection are in the Denys Eyre Bower collection in Chiddingstone Castle, Kent.

1 Edward Greey, Catalogue of a Collection of Paintings by European and American Artists and of Chinese, Cochin-Chinese, Korean and Japanese Keramics &c., the Property of Thomas E. Waggaman (Washington, D.C., 1888)
Literature
American Art Galleries, Thomas E. Waggaman Collection (New York, 1905), no. 420
Eskenazi Limited, The Charles A. Greenfield Collection of Japanese Lacquer (London, 1990), cat. no. 15
Andrew J. Pekarik, Japanese Lacquer, 1600-1900: Selections from the Charles A. Greenfield Collection (New York, 1980), cat. no. 15, figs. 24-6
H.Shugio (ed.), Catalogue of a Collection of Oriental Art Objects Belonging to Thomas E. Waggaman of Washington D.C. (New York, 1896), no. 1136
Harold P. Stern, The Magnificent Three: Lacquer, Netsuke and Tsuba (New York, 1972), no. 60 (boxes)
Exhibited
New York, 1972, Japan House Gallery
New York, 1980, Metropolitan Museum of Art

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.

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