A tiered box comprising of a suzuribako (box for traditional writing utensils), a box for paper and a lid, the three fitting together in inrōbuta (flush-fitting) style, with rounded corners,...
A tiered box comprising of a suzuribako (box for traditional writing utensils), a box for paper and a lid, the three fitting together in inrōbuta (flush-fitting) style, with rounded corners, chiri-i (edges) and pewter rims; the decoration executed in multi-colored lacquer, the surface divided on the sides into 49 or 63 squares and on the top into 63 squares, each containing a pattern of concentric rings, superimposed on the top by a single cormorant in flight diving toward stylized fish and seaweed superimposed on the sides; the interiors in black lacquer sprinkled with gold and silver hirame flakes; the suzuribako fitted with fude-oki (brush tray), suzuri (ink stone), and metal suiteki (water dropper) in the form of a tea kettle with a swing handle and removable lid.
Comes with the original fitted paulownia-wood tomobako storage box inscribed outside U to uo jūtebako (Tiered accessory box with cormorant and fish); dated inside to October 1933 and signed with a seal
Exhibited: Fourteenth Teiten Exhibition, Tokyo, 1933
Published: Nittenshi Hensan Iinkai (Nittenshi Editorial Committee), Nittenshi 11 (History of the National Salon 11), Teiten hen 6 (The Teiten Exhibition 6), Tokyo, Nitten, 1983, no. 53
As art historian Kendall Brown has noted: “Increasingly from the 1920s, Japan’s destiny was linked to the ocean … In the deco era, marine subjects—whether products of man or nature—appear in Japanese art more frequently, and with greater drama, than at any other time … In crafts, marine themes … became favorite subjects. Although Ōshita was not included in the groundbreaking Deco Japan exhibition, in part because his surviving works are so rare, this bold, lively combination of sea creatures with geometric patterning and innovative coloration, not previously seen in Japanese art, is very much in the spirit of the times.
Ōshita Sekkō had a long career at the heart of the artistic elite. He was born in Kanazawa, Ishikawa Prefecture, a traditional center of Japan’s lacquer industries, and studied the local Igarashi maki-e tradition of lacquer art under Matsuoka Kichibei and Hayashi Shūtarō, setting up his own business in 1894. In 1928 he contributed to a multi-media pair of screens with paulownia design presented to Empress Kōjun and his work was selected for the Teiten national exhibition and its successor iterations on no fewer than twenty occasions from 1931 to 1956, including the war years; this piece was shown at the fourteenth Teiten in 1933. Sekkō went on to exhibit at the Japan Traditional Crafts Exhibition and also contributed to his country’s post-war cultural diplomacy, showing his work in a large-scale exhibition of Japanese art that toured Australia and New Zealand in 1958. His Letter Box with Magnolia Design (1935, two years after the present work) is in the collections of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Kyoto.