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A FINE NANBAN LACQUER CABINET WITH TIGER AND LEOPARD
奥地利 北京时间
12月06日 下午5点 开拍 / 12月04日 下午3点 截止委托
拍品描述
A FINE NANBAN LACQUER CABINET WITH TIGER AND LEOPARD

Japan, late 16th century to early 17th century, Momoyama period (1573-1615)

Of wide rectangular form with two side-hung doors, one with a keyhole, opening to reveal the interior fitted with ten drawers of varying size. The doors and sides richly decorated in gold and brown takamaki-e and hiramaki-e, with a lobed cartouche to the front enclosing a tiger in bamboo and a leopard under a pine tree. The sides similarly decorated with foliate cartouches depicting idyllic garden scenes and scrolling vines, the top with a cockerel and chick beside a pine, all framed by hanabishi diaper and checkered patterns.

Each drawer and interior door finely lacquered in predominantly gold hiramaki-e with auspicious flowers and animals, including squirrels and grapevines, chrysanthemums, wisteria, and a peacock, all enclosed by geometric floral borders. With gilt-copper fittings, each finely chiseled, the locking plate with birds in a prunus tree on a ring-punched ground.

SIZE 70.6 x 48.5 x 39.4 cm

Condition: Good condition with expected wear, natural age cracks, minor losses to lacquer, some with associated minor touchups, small chips, the lockplate fully functional with key. One of the corner metal fittings re-attached. Overall presenting beautifully.

In the late sixteenth century, Japanese lacquer makers had a global clientele and vied to come up with innovative designs. They produced portable desks with drawers, such as this one, for the European, and especially the Portuguese, market. The style is known as nanban (literally, “southern barbarian”), meaning foreign.

Crafted in Kyoto's lacquer workshops alongside quite different wares intended for elite Japanese clients, these kinds of Nanban coffers and cabinets decorated in gold hiramaki-e and shell were among the earliest Japanese artifacts to reach Asian and European markets, starting two or three decades after the first landfall by Portuguese adventurers in the mid-sixteenth century. Celebrated today for their lavish, innovative technique and dense ornamentation (inspired in part by wares from other parts of Asia), such pieces brought the Japanese genius for design to global attention and ensured that Japan would be synonymous with 'lacquer' until the present day.

Tiger imagery has a long history in East Asia. They are also commonly paired with bamboo, as seen in the present lot; this motif is known as take no tora, or ‘tiger in bamboo’, and has many different interpretations – the tiger has a strong nature, is flexible and resilient like the bamboo, but it is also said that the strong tiger is looking for shelter underneath the bamboo, as any earthly power is inferior to the forces of nature. Moreover, the tiger and bamboo represent the power of faith in Buddhism. Leopards and tigers are not native to Japan thus artists were only exposed to these creatures via stories. Therefore, it has been said that artists sometimes depicted leopards as female tigers.

Auction comparison:
Compare a closely related, slightly smaller lacquered Nanban cabinet, dated to the 17th century, Momoyama-Edo period, 43.3 x 63.6 x 36.4 cm, at Sotheby’s, 18 June 2020, Paris, lot 126 (sold for EUR 10,000 or approx. EUR 11,500 adjusted for inflation at the time of writing).

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价格信息

拍品估价:8,000 - 15,000 欧元 起拍价格:8,000 欧元  买家佣金: 35.00% 服务费:平台服务费为成交总金额(含佣金)的3%,最低200元

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