A LACQUER WRITING BOX (SUZURIBAKO)

TAISHO PERIOD (EARLY 20TH CENTURY), SIGNED FUNABASHI SHUMIN (1859-AFTER 1914)

Details

A LACQUER WRITING BOX (SUZURIBAKO)
taisho period (early 20th century), signed funabashi shumin (1859-after 1914)
Designed on the lid with a night scene of black birds flying over a stand of pines in gold takamaki-e, keuchi, togidashi, hirame, nashiji and silver and gold powder sprinkled on a roiro ground, the underside of the lid designed in the same techniques with a landscape of rounded hills and blossoming cherries of gold lacquer and silver togidashi and gold pines transversed with wide bands of mist in kimpun and hirame, the hills also embellished with okibirame and kimpun of two colors of gold; the interior decorated on the implement tray and lower section with an abbreviated version of the same cherries and hills on a roiro and nashiji ground and fitted with two brushes in nashiji cases and a paper knife and paper pricker in matching nashiji cases with soft-metal mounts of shells and waterplants, these motifs repeated in various soft-metals on the shakudo mizuire cast in the form of a kettle enclosed in a lobed shakudo frame, the inkstone lacquered on the base in yellow nashiji; box base nashiji, rims silver, red jar seal below the signature unread
9½ x 8 1/8 x 1 5/8in. (24 x 20.7 x 4.2cm.)

Provenance

L. J. Wickes Antiques, Sudbury, Suffolk, England (on a card label within the box) (L 225)

Lot Essay

Funabashi Shumin was a pupil of Uematsu Homin (see lot ---). He won a silver medal at the Louisiana Purchase Exhibition in 1904. The last recorded data about the artist is the bronze medal he won at an exhibition in Tokyo in 1914.

For another imperial presentation box (tebako) by Funabashi Shumin see T. Goke, J. Hutt and E. W. Wrangham, Meiji no takara: Treasures of Imperial Japan, Lacquer (London: Kibo Foundation, 1995), vol. 2, no. 230; also Jan Dees, "Japanese Imperial Presentation Boxes 1900-1930", Oriental Art vol. 43, no. 1 (1997), fig. 5, p. 4.