Page 131 - Bonhams May 16, 2019 London Japanese Art

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A SMALL IRON JIZAI (ARTICULATED) OKIMONO OF A DRAGON and Chang Yuan-Feng, eds., Mingzhi zhi mei
Meiji (1868-1912) or Taisho (1912-1926) era (1868-1912), (Beauty of Meiji Period) / Splendid Beauty: Illustrious Crafts of the
late 19th/early 20th century Meiji Period, Taipei, National Taiwan Normal University Research
Realistically rendered with a long serpentine and undulating body, Centre for Conservation of Cultural Relics, 2013, pp.294-297.
forged with numerous hammered scales joined inside the body with
karakuri tsunagi, the leg joints, head, mouth, tongue and ears each Of all the categories of late Edo-period and Meiji-period artefacts
constructed of moving parts, unsigned; with a wood storage box. eagerly collected outside Japan for the last century and a half,
53cm (20 7/8in) long. (2). articulated animals have the least trace of documentary evidence
concerning their origin and development. Even the Japanese word for
£20,000 - 30,000 them, jizai or jizai okimono, appears to be a post-Edo term. However
despite the obscurity of their origins, these displays of Oriental
JPY2,900,000 - 4,400,000
US$26,000 - 39,000 dexterity perfectly matched a trend in Western Orientalist taste in the
last half of the 19th century. In the West they were first highlighted in
Le Japon Artistique of 1881 which reproduces an articulated frog in
Provenance three different positions and describes it in detail. However, despite
An English private collection. their creation in Japan a century earlier, these articulated animals were
only brought back to the attention of Japanese audiences in October
Compare an almost identical articulated iron larger dragon forged 1983, when several examples were displayed in the special exhibition
with the same construction and delineation of limbs, spines and horns Nihon no kinko (Japanese Metalwork) held at Tokyo National Museum.
but with gilt embellished flames illustrated in Kuo Hong-Sheng

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