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Lot Essay
The set of four stacked, nearly square food trays, whose heights increase slightly from the top tray to the bottom one, is a characteristic Japanese form made to store delicacies for a New Year’s feast or for a spring outing to enjoy cherry-blossoms.
The stunningly modern design seems shocking in the context of the conservative Japanese lacquer tradition. The craftsman used mother–of pearl to emphasize an array of exotic, new motifs including stripes and checks. In the early seventeenth century, Portuguese and Spanish merchants imported chic textiles of Southeast Asian origin. On popular contemporary folding screens depicting the arrival in Nagasaki of trade ships carrying those “foreign barbarians,” we see Portuguese merchants wearing baggy pantaloons with stripes and checks.
The box design is unified by a strict, all-over pattern of horizontal bands made up of thin, alternating stripes of mother-of-pearl, powdered gold or silver maki-e, and a rich variety of stylised geometric and floral bands. These techniques are streamlined and rearranged here for maximum impact. Related examples are in the Irving Collection, New York and the Mary Griggs Burke Collection in the Minneapolis Institute of Art.
Most striking here, however, are the ten Western playing cards, some with figures. One can only imagine the merrymaking and amusement when the Japanese patron who commissioned this luxury item unwrapped it for a picnic under the blossoms. No wonder it appealed to the taste of Japan’s great twentieth-century Nihonga painter and collector, Maeda Seison.
Playing cards (karuta) were introduced to Japan by Portuguese traders in the second half of the sixteenth century. The cards here appear to be Portuguese, one with a seated king and two with a knight in armour holding his shield in one hand and his sword in the other. Additional cards feature motifs that represent numbers. The first indigenous Japanese deck of cards appeared in the Tensho era (1573–92). The Tensho card game consisted of 48 cards in four colours, some with numbers and some with courtiers. European-style playing cards, known as unsun karuta, a subset or derivative of karuta, appear on an Edo-period lacquer box for poem slips in the Suntory Museum, Tokyo, and on a small hand drum (kotsutsumi) for noh performance in the Nanban Bunkakan in Osaka. The subject evidently appealed to the cultivated military elite who favored noh theater and the arts.
For another example of a four-tier jubako with card design, see: Sakai City Museum ed., Nanban shikki - shitsugei ni miru tozai koryu [Namban lacquerware - Cultural Exchanges between East and West through Lacquer Craft], (Osaka, 1983), p. 70, no. 82.
For more about Unsun Karuta, see:
Sezon Museum of Art and Shizuoka Prefectural Museum of Art, eds., ‘Porutogaru to Nanban bunka’ ten: mezase toho no kuniguni [‘Portugal and Nanban culture’ exhibition : Via Orientals] (Japan, 1993), p. 216-217, 219, no. 206
and go to the Kyushu National Museum website (Japanese):
http:/www.kyuhaku.jp/museum/museum_info04-07.html
http:/www.kyuhaku.jp/collection/collection_gl02.html
For examples of Nanban lacquerware with similar stripe design see:
James C.Y. Watt and Barbara B. Ford, East Asian Lacquer: The Florence and Herbert Irving Collection, (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1991), p. 229, no. 107. (jubako [tiered food box])
Tokyo National Museum A Selection of Japanese Art from The Mary and Jackson Burke Collection (New York, 1985), pl. 112
and go to the website of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, accession number 2015.500.2.31a–f:
https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection
A jubako with playing cards without stripes and a mirror box with similar Nanban-style stripes sold in Christie’s London, 8th December 2016, sale 13127, lots 78 and 79.
The stunningly modern design seems shocking in the context of the conservative Japanese lacquer tradition. The craftsman used mother–of pearl to emphasize an array of exotic, new motifs including stripes and checks. In the early seventeenth century, Portuguese and Spanish merchants imported chic textiles of Southeast Asian origin. On popular contemporary folding screens depicting the arrival in Nagasaki of trade ships carrying those “foreign barbarians,” we see Portuguese merchants wearing baggy pantaloons with stripes and checks.
The box design is unified by a strict, all-over pattern of horizontal bands made up of thin, alternating stripes of mother-of-pearl, powdered gold or silver maki-e, and a rich variety of stylised geometric and floral bands. These techniques are streamlined and rearranged here for maximum impact. Related examples are in the Irving Collection, New York and the Mary Griggs Burke Collection in the Minneapolis Institute of Art.
Most striking here, however, are the ten Western playing cards, some with figures. One can only imagine the merrymaking and amusement when the Japanese patron who commissioned this luxury item unwrapped it for a picnic under the blossoms. No wonder it appealed to the taste of Japan’s great twentieth-century Nihonga painter and collector, Maeda Seison.
Playing cards (karuta) were introduced to Japan by Portuguese traders in the second half of the sixteenth century. The cards here appear to be Portuguese, one with a seated king and two with a knight in armour holding his shield in one hand and his sword in the other. Additional cards feature motifs that represent numbers. The first indigenous Japanese deck of cards appeared in the Tensho era (1573–92). The Tensho card game consisted of 48 cards in four colours, some with numbers and some with courtiers. European-style playing cards, known as unsun karuta, a subset or derivative of karuta, appear on an Edo-period lacquer box for poem slips in the Suntory Museum, Tokyo, and on a small hand drum (kotsutsumi) for noh performance in the Nanban Bunkakan in Osaka. The subject evidently appealed to the cultivated military elite who favored noh theater and the arts.
For another example of a four-tier jubako with card design, see: Sakai City Museum ed., Nanban shikki - shitsugei ni miru tozai koryu [Namban lacquerware - Cultural Exchanges between East and West through Lacquer Craft], (Osaka, 1983), p. 70, no. 82.
For more about Unsun Karuta, see:
Sezon Museum of Art and Shizuoka Prefectural Museum of Art, eds., ‘Porutogaru to Nanban bunka’ ten: mezase toho no kuniguni [‘Portugal and Nanban culture’ exhibition : Via Orientals] (Japan, 1993), p. 216-217, 219, no. 206
and go to the Kyushu National Museum website (Japanese):
http:/www.kyuhaku.jp/museum/museum_info04-07.html
http:/www.kyuhaku.jp/collection/collection_gl02.html
For examples of Nanban lacquerware with similar stripe design see:
James C.Y. Watt and Barbara B. Ford, East Asian Lacquer: The Florence and Herbert Irving Collection, (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1991), p. 229, no. 107. (jubako [tiered food box])
Tokyo National Museum A Selection of Japanese Art from The Mary and Jackson Burke Collection (New York, 1985), pl. 112
and go to the website of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, accession number 2015.500.2.31a–f:
https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection
A jubako with playing cards without stripes and a mirror box with similar Nanban-style stripes sold in Christie’s London, 8th December 2016, sale 13127, lots 78 and 79.