A fine and rare Nanban cabinet


Momoyama period (1573-1615), early 17th centuryThe cabinet with a double-hinged door above two long deep bottom drawers opening to reveal a fitted interior of eleven drawers of varying sizes arranged around a central arched deep drawer, the front two doors and top decorated with a relief-carved scenes of Chinese boys chasing animals in a garden, the sides and inside of the doors decorated in normal Nanban floral style with flowering shrubs enclosed within a lobed panel in gold, silver and slight coloured takamaki-e and hiramaki-e surrounded by four assorted crests reserved on a shagreen-covered ground, the inside drawers similarly lacquered with sparse flowers and fitted with gilt knops and pulls in the form of florets, the whole framed by narrow borders of geometric patterns and shippo-tsunagi (linked-jewels), inlaid in shell, the sides applied with two gilt-copper bracket carrying handles, the front corners with four gilt-copper fittings along each side engraved with a chrysanthemum crest among karakusa ('Chinese grasses'), on a separate four-legged ebony wood stand, with two Japanese paper slips inscribed Nanban jinbutsu maki-e raden dansu, Manno Bijutsukan shozo (A Nanban maki-e raden cabinet with figures in the collection of Manno Museum) The cabinet: 58.5cm x 52.2cm x 42.2cm (23in x 20½in x 16 5/8in), the stand: 72.2cm x 48.5cm (28½in x 19 1/16in). (2).
|ProvenanceManno Museum, item 1110.