AN INRO-DANSU [STORAGE CABINET FOR INRO]

EDO/MEIJI PERIOD (SECOND HALF OF THE 19TH CENTURY)

Details

AN INRO-DANSU [STORAGE CABINET FOR INRO]
Edo/Meiji Period (Second Half of the 19th Century)
Of the usual form with a detachable drop-front and six numbered drawers; orange lacquer streaked with darker lacquer in imitation of wood-grain and decorated with simulated tsuba and kozuka, in gold and silver hiramaki-e and takamaki-e with polychrome lacquer imitating metal iroe techniques; interior of the door black lacquer; drawer-fronts half in black lacquer and half in green, red, and grey lacquer in a version of Wakasa-nuri; interiors and undersides of the drawers and the underside of the cabinet black lacquer; edges and rims silver lacquer; the handle and drawer-pulls silver

The simulated sword-fittings decorated with a variety of popular subjects, including: sparrow-dancers; shojo; Chokaro sennin and another sennin with a bowl; a sennin with peaches; the Chinese general Kan'u; Hotei; Daruma; Tobosaku with his peaches; and an oni disguised as a monk collecting alms [see illustration below]; the kozuka and some of the tsuba with the signatures of metalworkers: the kozuka Mino no kami Michitada, and the tsuba Harumasa, Gekkosai, Masatsugu and Shigetoshi
12.1/8 x 13.7/8 x 9in. (30.5 x 35.2 x 22.8cm.)

Lot Essay

Several similar cabinets exist, most of them unsigned, but one in a Tokyo private collection is signed gyonen hachijuni-o Zeshin saku [made by Zeshin, an old man aged eighty-two (=1888)], providing us with a possible date for the present piece. Another cabinet, in the Hatakeyama Museum, is signed Zeshin on one of the tsuba1. Okada2 introduces two related boxes, both of them unsigned, and provides an account of the method used to produce these applied designs, based on the 1933 technical study by Sawaguchi Goichi3. According to Sawaguchi's account, a negative mould of the sword-fitting motif was made in plaster and the design was built inside the mould by applying the various layers of lacquer in reverse order. The lacquer decoration was then released from the mould and applied to the box. This method would account for the existence of identical motifs on different cabinets, some signed and some unsigned.

1 Goke Tadaomi, Bakumatsu kaikaki no shikko kaiga: Shibata Zeshin meihinshu [Lacquer and Painting in Late Edo and Early Meiji: A Collection of Masterworks by Shibata Zeshin] (Tokyo, 1981), pl. 54-60

2 Barbra Teri Okada, A Sprinkling of Gold: The Lacquer Box Collection of Elaine Ehrenkranz (Newark, NJ, 1983), cat. nos. 33-4; see also Julia Meech, Lacquerware from the Weston Collection: A Selection of Inro and Boxes (New York, 1995), cat. no. 45

3 Sawaguchi Goichi, Nihon shikko no kenkyu [A Study of Japanese Lacquer] (Tokyo, 1933; modern edn. Tokyo, 1966), pp. 346-7

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