SIGNED KOBAYASHI YASUAKI, EDO PERIOD (AFTER 1813)

Details

A FOUR-CASE INRO
Signed Kobayashi Yasuaki, Edo Period (after 1813)
Gold lacquer ground; decoration in togidashi sumi-e [togidashi-e imitating ink painting]; compartments and risers gold nashiji; shoulders and rims gold lacquer; signed in gold hiramaki-e underneath Ko-Hogen ga Tsunehide kore o utsusu [copied by Tsunehide from a painting by Ko- Hogen (Aishin)] and Yanagawa no ju Kobayashi Yasuaki sei [made by Kobayashi Yasuaki of Yanagawa]; ivory ojime with a butterfly and branch in coral, shell, tortoiseshell and lacquer; 18th-century ivory netsuke as a sleeping sarumawashi [monkey-trainer] with his monkey stealing from his basket

A sarumawashi [monkey showman] on one side watched by a peasant family on the reverse, the whole design in the style of the Kano dynasty of official painters
31/8in. (8cm.) high

Special notice

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Lot Essay

For a well-known inro with a very similar design, see Julia Hutt, Japanese Inro [in the Victoria and Albert Museum] (London, 1997), plates 69-71. The Victoria and Albert Museum example (inv. no. W.423-1916) is signed Aishin for the design on the reverse next to the family of onlookers where one might expect to find a painter's signature, whereas the present lot is signed on the base and the signature of the painter and lacquer are in the same hand. Kano Aishin (Tohaku, 1772-1821) was appointed to the rank of Hogen in 1813, but the V&A inro is dated 1811. The design appears to have been originally taken from the illustrated book Wakan meihitsu gaho, published in 1767.

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