JAPANESE EXPORT WORKS OF ART LACQUER
A Pair Of Edo Period Export Lacquer Cabinets

MID 17TH CENTURY

细节
A Pair Of Edo Period Export Lacquer Cabinets
Mid 17th Century
Finely decorated in gold, silver and iroe hiramakie and takamakie with gold and aogai kimpun, each depicting scenes with Chinese men in a mountainous sea-landscape contemplating the full moon, fishing or playing, the interior with eight drawers depicting cartouches bordered in nashiji, with houses and trees in a hilly landscape, on a roironuri ground, the inside of the drawers in red lacquer, fine copper gilt kanagu, some old wear, minor restoration and three kanagu replaced
26¾ x 16¾ x 20¾in. (68.1 x 42.7 x 52.7cm.) (2)

拍品专文

Similar cabinets are in the Royal Danish Collection, see Martha Boyer, Japanese Export Lacquers from the Seventeenth Century in the National Museum of Denmark, Copenhagen, 1959.

Towards the end of the 17th century the rich shell-inlaid coffers of the Momoyama period were gradually replaced by a more restrained and elegant style with carefully placed gold lacquer decoration on a plain black lacquer ground. The demands of the Dutch, who exported lacquer chests, coffers and panels, together with much porcelain, from their trading station at Nagasaki, meant that much of the lacquer had to be produced to a fixed price and time; as a result, their thin coats of black lacquer often became grey and oxidised after years of exposure to sunlight, and were sometimes "refreshed" by a western Japanner using a shellac-based "lacquer". These chests however are of finer quality than the normal export wares, and were probably part of a special order.