A gold lacquer five-case inro
By Hosen Jitoku, 19th century
The rich nashiji ground embellished in gold, silver and iroe togidashi with a procession of ladies and samurai from the Genroku Period, each individually attired in a variety of different outfits and enacting a different pose, the ladies also adorning contrasting hairstyles, all dancing diagonally across both sides, the interior of nashiji, signed in red lacquer seal characters Hosen Jitoku; with cloisonné enamel ojime. 9cm (3½in).
The rich nashiji ground embellished in gold, silver and iroe togidashi with a procession of ladies and samurai from the Genroku Period, each individually attired in a variety of different outfits and enacting a different pose, the ladies also adorning contrasting hairstyles, all dancing diagonally across both sides, the interior of nashiji, signed in red lacquer seal characters Hosen Jitoku; with cloisonné enamel ojime. 9cm (3½in).
Sold for
£22,500
inc. premium
Footnotes
- 輪舞図蒔絵印籠 銘「鳳船自得」 19世紀
Provenance: purchased from S. Marchant & Son Ltd., London, 1966.
Wrangham collection, no.631.
Published: E. A. Wrangham, The Index of Inro Artists, 1995, p.96, Hosen Jitoku.
It is unclear what festival or occasion these figures were celebrating but the subject of townspeople dancing (rinbu-zu) was a popular theme in Japanese art. The decoration on the inro presented here is reminiscent of the famous six-fold screen by the Rimpa artist Kamisaka Sekka (1866-1942), now in the Gitter-Yelen collection, which is also painted with a charming procession of dancing figures that curve around the gold paper. Compare also with a similarly-decorated, Edo Period, two-fold screen in the Toyama Memorial Museum of Art in Saitama; and another four-fold screen in the National Museum of Japanese History in Chiba.
Category: Asian Art / Japanese Art
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