SIGNED ZESHIN, EDO PERIOD (19TH CENTURY)

Details

A BRUSH BOX
Signed Zeshin, Edo Period (19th Century)
The bamboo cover decorated in black, brown, gold and silver kijimaki-e, takamaki-e and togidashi-e with a sake bottle converted into an oil lamp and a spray of cherry blossom, the veins of the leaves in gold tsukegaki and the blossoms and buds chiselled into the surface of the bamboo, the flame in gold lacquer, the wick in silver, the box decorated overall with an ishime ground
21.5cm. long

Special notice

Buyers from within the EU: VAT payable at 17.5% on just the buyer's premium (NOT the hammer price) Buyers from outside the EU: VAT payable at 17.5% on hammer price and buyer's premium. If a buyer, having registered under a non-EU address, decides that an item is not to be exported from the EU, then he/she should advise Christie's to this effect immediately.

Lot Essay

The decoration depicted is the reading lamp of a sumo wrestler who on his retirement converted his favourite sake bottle into a lamp for the evenings of his old age. Zeshin elaborates this theme in a sumi-e, where he includes not only the lamp, but a book and a pair of megane [reading glasses], together with a poem alluding to the subject.1

1 Howard A. Link, The Art of Shibata Zeshin, The Mr and Mrs James O'Brien Collection at the Honolulu Academy of Arts (London, 1979), p. 87, no. 31.

For a similar box see Sebastian Izzard LLC, Japanese Paintings, Prints and Works of Art (New York, 2001).

For a hako netsuke with a bamboo cover see Howard A. Link, The Art of Shibata Zeshin, The Mr and Mrs James E O'Brien Collection at the Honolulu Academy of Arts (London, 1979), p. 132, no. 79.

More from Japanese Art and Design

View All