Page 148 - Bonhams May 2017 London Fine Japanese Art

227*
A LACQUERED-WOOD INLAID SUZURIBAKO
(BOX FOR WRITING UTENSILS) AND COVER
By Ogawa Haritsu (1663-1747), Edo period (1615-1868), 18th century
Of standard rectangular form, with inrobuta (flush-fitting lid), the interior
fitted with two removable lacquered-wood components holding in
place a silvered-bronze suiteki (water-dropper) and a suzuri (inkstone)
with gold-lacquered rim; the wooden lid worked to give prominence
to the grain and decorated in gold, silver, and red takamaki-e, shell,
and pottery with a caparisoned elephant bearing on its back a lotus
pedestal which supports a pagoda-shaped reliquary, looking towards
a dancing karako (Chinese boy) who holds a fan in his right hand, the
surfaces apart from the top and sides in fine gold mura-nashiji on a
black-lacquer ground, sealed in green pottery Haritsu,
with cotton-and-silk storage bag and a wood storage box.
5cm x 18.2cm x 23cm (2in x 7 1/8in x 9in). (7).
£30,000 - 40,000
JPY4,100,000 - 5,500,000
US$37,000 - 50,000
146 | BONHAMS For details of the charges payable in addition to the final Hammer Price of each Lot
please refer to paragraphs 7 & 8 of the Notice to Bidders at the back of the catalogue.
Published:
Haino Akio, Ogawa Haritsu: Edo kogei no iki (Ogawa Haritsu: Chic in
Edo Craft), Nihon no bijutsu (Arts of Japan), 389, Tokyo, Shibundo,
1998, pl.8.
An elephant (without a Chinese boy attendant) bearing an elaborate
structure on its back is seen in several inro with Haritsu’s signature, as
well as on a number of well-known suzuribako by him including one
in the Hikone Castle Museum and another in the Osaka City Museum
of Fine Arts. This motif, named Kyuko (Nine Tributes), can be traced
to the first chapter of the Zhou Li, a Chinese political text compiled
around the third century BC, which lists nine different categories of
material to be donated to the emperor. The association between
the Nine Tributes and an elephant, a later development, is seen in
sixteenth-century Chinese ink-cake designs; Haritsu may well have
learned about the mixed origins of this exotic imagery from his friend
the haiku poet Takarai Kikaku (1661-1707), ‘who was conversant
with Chinese culture and loved to use obscure allusions in his poetry’
(Andrew J. Pekarik, Japanese Lacquer, 1600-1900: Selections from
the Charles A. Greenfield Collection, New York, Metropolitan Museum
of Art, 1980, p. 85). The Chinese boy, on the other hand, was likely
taken from a design by the painter Hanabusa Itcho (1652-1724),
whose genre scenes, later widely reproduced, clearly influenced the
work of Haritsu and his successors (see Malcolm Fairley Japanese
Works of Art, Inro from a Private European Collection, London, 2013,
p.8 and cat. no.2).
The seal Haritsu is unusual; the artist habitually signed himself as
Ritsuo, a name he adopted in 1712, or (more frequently) Kan, literally,
‘look, observe’, as seen in lot 226, perhaps in reference to his acute
powers of observation.