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A gold lacquer five-case inro By Hosen Jitoku, 19th century image 1
A gold lacquer five-case inro By Hosen Jitoku, 19th century image 2
A gold lacquer five-case inro By Hosen Jitoku, 19th century image 3
Lot 343

15 May 2012, 10:30 BST
London, New Bond Street

Sold for £22,500 inc. premium

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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.

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