UNSIGNED, EDO PERIOD (MID-19TH CENTURY)

Details

A RYOSHIBAKO [BOX FOR WRITING PAPER]
Unsigned, Edo Period (Mid-19th Century)
Gold Gyobu nashiji ground, decoration in gold and silver hiramaki-e and takamaki-e with inlaid silver, gilt metal, foil and togidashi-e; interior and base nashiji; rims silver; on the underside of the lid a black stallion, a silver mare and a foal grazing below pines along a spit of land, perhaps representing Amanohashidate in Tango province, the edges of the distant hills, clouds and shoreline embellished with small squares and rectangles of gold and silver foil
16 3/8 x 12¾ x 5½in. (41.5 x 32.5 x 14.0cm.)

Special notice

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Lot Essay

The outside of the lid is decorated with an ornate landscape that is very close in both design and technique to a paper-box in the Khalili collection signed by Nakayama Komin (1808-70). The Khalili collection also includes an unsigned writing-table with the same landscape.1 A label on the storage box accompanying this piece mentions a date of Ansei 2 [1855] and states Kajikawa kore o saku [made by Kajikawa]. There is no particular reason to accept or reject this attribution to the famous Kajikawa family of maki-e artists, since it is clear that designs such as these were widely available to 19th-century lacquer workshops. The date is preceded by the words higurashi [day-long], an epithet originally applied to the famous early 17th-century Hatsune no chodo wedding gift, suggesting that this paper-box was part of such a set.2

1 Goke, T., Hutt, J. and Wrangham, E.A., Meiji no Takara, Treasures of Imperial Japan, Lacquer (London, 1995), nos. 114-5; no. 115, signed by Nakayama Komin, is also reproduced in MOA Museum of Art, Kindai Nihon no shikkogei [Japanese lacquer art of recent times] (Atami, 1983), no. 2.
2 Koike Tomio, 'Hatsune no chodo ni tsuite [On the Hatsune no chodo]', in Tokugawa Art Museum, Hatsune no chodo [Hatsune maki-e lacquer furnishings] (Nagoya, 1985), (111-21), 111.

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