Nakayama Komin (1808-1870)A lacquer suzuribako (writing box)Edo period (1615-1868) or Meiji era (1868-1912), 19th centuryThe small rectangular box decorated on the lid in gold and red togidashi maki-e on a roiro-nuri ground within a black gourd-shaped reserve of a tea hut and red maples in a rain shower, after a painting by Kano Naganobu (1775-1828) inscribed on the right Isen hogen hitsu and sealed To, the four corners ornamented in gold hiramaki-e with leaf sprays; the grounds of the underside of the lid and lower interior roiro-nuri with cloud bands of gold and black togidashi maki-e and hirame and with a poem in gold low-relief lacquer on the underside of the lid, the interior fitted with a removable tray containing a silver water dropper in the shape of two conjoined maple leaves within a silver saucer and with a round fan-shaped inkstone, signed on the interior tray Sensen Komin saku 6 5/8 x 6 x 1in (16.7 x 15 x 2.5cm)注脚PublishedStephen Little and Edmund J. Lewis, View of the Pinnacle: Japanese Lacquer Writing Boxes: The Lewis Collection of Suzuribako, Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2011, cat. no.27Contemporary lacquer scholar Takao Yo has challenged a long-standing belief that Nakayama Komin died aged 63, making his birth date 1807 or 1808, since there exists a work by him with a plausible signature giving his age as 77 and we know that he associated with both the painter Sakai Hōitsu (1761-1828) and the tea connoisseur Matsudaira Fumai (1751-1818); see Takao Yōo, "Kinsei maki-eshi meikan (A Directory of Early- Modern and Modern Lacquerers)," Rokusho, 24 (March 2005), p.112).