
Enrica Medugno
Senior Sale Coordinator


Sold for £2,560 inc. premium
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Senior Sale Coordinator

Head of Department
Japanese lacquer makers began to produce wares for overseas markets, including Persia, due to the opening of foreign trade following the Meiji restoration of 1868. For examples of Japanese qalamdans for the Persian market in The Nasser D. Khalili Collection of Islamic Art, see N. D. Khalili, B. W. Robinson & T. Stanley, Lacquer of the Islamic Lands, Part II, Oxford, 1997, pp. 214-215, Cat. 441, 442, 443, & 444.
Abe no Nakamaro (c. 698-770) was a Japanese scholar and poet known for his poems about longing for his home in Nara, including the following, which is represented on the present lot:
ama no hara furisakemireba Kasuga naru
Mikasa-no-yama ni ideshi tsuki ka mo
'When I look up into the vast sky tonight, is it the same moon that I saw rising from behind Mt. Mikasa at Kasuga Shrine all those years ago?'