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Cabinet (kazari-dana)

TA 0257

Cabinet (kazari-dana) with doors, Shibayama style

Richly decorated high cabinet (kazari-dana) made of darkly stained and lacquered hardwood with fine 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 220 cm (without 191 cm), width 102 cm, depth 33 cm.

sold

Enlarged Picture

Over a structured base with four high and straight legs and with a carved panel, devided into three parts and decorated with birds of paradise and blossoms at the front side, stands the straight main corpus of the cabinet. In the lower part it has a row with three drawers, above are two rows with cabinets with double or sliding doors and in between open shelves set in skilfully carved borders and partly decorated with birds and blossoms made of bone. Below the upper row of cabinets there are three-dimensional woodcarvings with a phoenix, a dragon and clouds.

The front of the top section of the cabinet is crowned by a three-dimensional large carved phoenix with open wings and tail feathers, which stretch over the whole width.

All front sides of the doors and drawers are richly decorated with birds flying between trees and flowers worked out in a Hira- and Takamaki-e technique with gold and lacquer. The inlaid works are made of carved bone and mother-of-pearls. The lower right front door shows a Chinese wise man with a fan under a blossoming tree. The frames of the door panels show a subtly painted golden pattern on a black lacquered base.

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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