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Cabinet (kazari-dana)

TA 0157

Cabinet (kazari-dana) with doors, Shibayama style

An elegant, richly decorated and structured cabinet (kazari-dana) made of different darkly stained woods with lacquer and inlaid works in the Shibayama style.

This precious and richly decorated piece of furniture was part of the furnishings - together with the other cabinet we offer - of the Japanese embassy in Munich until 1935. Only with minor faults due to its age, which are neatly restored by an expert craftsman.

(Yokohama?), Meiji period, about 1890-1905.

Size: Hight with top section 180 cm (without 163 cm), width 101 cm, depth 30 cm.

sold

Enlarged Picture

Over a base with four legs, curved inwards, and with skilfully worked out woodcarvings, with a lotus and tendril design, stands the straight main corpus of the cabinet. In the lower part it has a row with three drawers, above different, partly put back cabinets with double or sliding doors and in-between open shelfs, all set in skilfully worked out ornamental borders. In the upper part there is a carved panel with a phoenix.

The front of the top section of the furniture is crowned by a carved phoenix with open wings in the central part and with carved bird-heads at the corners.

All front sides of doors and drawers and the back sides of the open shelves are decorated with very nice panelling surrounded by woodcarvings: on a gold lacquered base (nashiji) are gold lacquered paintings and inlaid works made of bone and mother-of-pearls, which show different birds with trees and flowers.

Such luxurious pieces of furniture with woodcarvings and inlaid works were made in Japan especially for the export from about 1880 until 1905. They were presented at the world exhibitions at that time and there had been a great and lasting demand for them especially in Europe and in the United States. They were sold in luxurious shops as Liberty & Co. in London for extraordinary high prices.

The Japanese craftsmen who made these lavish furniture had lost by the radical changes during the Meiji period their patrons and clients, but they found new fields of activity in the workshops were such splendid items of furniture were made for the export. During the Edo period the woodcarvers mainly made the furnishings and statues for Buddhistic temples. This tradition still can be seen in the carved motifes of the cabinets they created later, which often were decorated with dragons, a phoenix or other Buddhistic symbols.

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