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Lot Essay
Nagasaki, the technique of colourful shell inlay on a black lacquer ground, was produced under Dutch instruction in Nagasaki from the late 18th century. The colourful decoration of floral and bird motifs follow the conventional Nagasaki designs of the period.
This secretaire was probably produced for the North European market as its shape is closely linked to Dutch and North German examples. It may have been made on the island of Deshima in the Bay of Nagasaki. Deshima, also known as Dejima, was a man-made island constructed in Nagasaki harbour by the Tokugawa shogunate (1603-1867) in the mid-1630s. It was the only place in Japan where Westerners, first the Portuguese and then the Dutch, were allowed to reside from the 1630s to 1856 under the country’s policy of national seclusion.
For a similar example in The Peabody Essex Museum (inventory number E 79452), Salem, see Oliver Impey and Christiaan Jorg, Japanese Export Lacquer 1580-1850, (Amsterdam, 2005), p. 220-221, no. 535.
This secretaire was probably produced for the North European market as its shape is closely linked to Dutch and North German examples. It may have been made on the island of Deshima in the Bay of Nagasaki. Deshima, also known as Dejima, was a man-made island constructed in Nagasaki harbour by the Tokugawa shogunate (1603-1867) in the mid-1630s. It was the only place in Japan where Westerners, first the Portuguese and then the Dutch, were allowed to reside from the 1630s to 1856 under the country’s policy of national seclusion.
For a similar example in The Peabody Essex Museum (inventory number E 79452), Salem, see Oliver Impey and Christiaan Jorg, Japanese Export Lacquer 1580-1850, (Amsterdam, 2005), p. 220-221, no. 535.