SIGNED KAIGYOKU MASATSUGU (OSAKA, 1813-92), EDO/MEIJI PERIOD (19TH CENTURY)

Among the best-known of all netsuke carvers, Kaigyokusai Masatsugu is especially celebrated for the extreme care and precision of his carving and for his use of the very finest ivory. As noted by Ueda Reikichi, Masatsugu of Osaka appears to have been one of the first carvers whose work was exported on a large scale during his own lifetime1, a distinction he shares with his near-contemporary the lacquerer Shibata Zeshin of Tokyo.

1 Raymond Bushell (ed.), The Netsuke Handbook of Ueda Reikichi (First published as Ueda Reikichi, Netsuke no kenkyu [A Study of Netsuke], Osaka, 1943; Rutland, Vermont and Tokyo, 1961), p. 242.

For similar examples, see M.T. Coullery and M.S. Newstead, Netsuke [in the Baur Collection, Geneva] (Geneva, 1977), p. 47, no. C1116, and Arakawa Hirokazu, The Go Collection of Netsuke (Tokyo, 1983), pl. 90.