拍品專文
In both quality and style of decoration this miniature cabinet resembles examples in the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Khalili collection, both of them signed Shinryo, using the same characters as in the Shin ichi and Ryozan on this piece. There seems to have been a degree of inventiveness on the part of Shibayama artists in coining a rich variety of similar names and it is likely that Shinryo had a hand in the manufacture of the present lot. Shinryo Ekisei or Yasumasa won a prize for a decorative panel exhibited by Ozeki Yahei in 1877 and is recorded in the trade directory Tokyo meikokan (1879), as having produced an object exhibited by Shibayama Senzo.1
1 Oliver Impey, Malcolm Fairley and Joe Earle (eds.), The Nasser D. Khalili Collection of Japanese Art (London, 1995), vol. 4, part 2, cat. no. 195; Joe Earle (ed.), The Toshiba Gallery: Japanese Art and Design [in the Victoria and Albert Museum] (London, 1986), cat. no. 190.
1 Oliver Impey, Malcolm Fairley and Joe Earle (eds.), The Nasser D. Khalili Collection of Japanese Art (London, 1995), vol. 4, part 2, cat. no. 195; Joe Earle (ed.), The Toshiba Gallery: Japanese Art and Design [in the Victoria and Albert Museum] (London, 1986), cat. no. 190.