A kazaribako (decorative box) of unusual form, the sashimono (joined-wood) body comprising a lid formed from seven pieces with a flat top, angled long sides and vertical short sides, and...
A kazaribako (decorative box) of unusual form, the sashimono (joined-wood) body comprising a lid formed from seven pieces with a flat top, angled long sides and vertical short sides, and a container formed from five pieces with vertical sides and a wider base, the lid meeting the base in inrōbuta (flush-fitting) style; the decoration of the short sides executed in strips of yōgai (abalone); the decoration of the long sides and top executed in gold, silver, and colored hiramaki-e and takamaki-e (low- and high-relief “sprinkled picture”) against gold hirame flakes on a black-lacquer ground, the flakes densely packed on the top but less so on the sides; the principal motifs leaves and flowering strands of weeping cherry; the interior and underside plain black lacquer
Comes with the original fitted wooden tomobako box inscribed outside Yōgai kazaribako Sakura no en (Box with shell decoration, “Cherry-Blossom Banquet”); signed and sealed inside Shun; tomogire wrapping cloth sealed Shun; printed artist résumé with final date of 1990
A leading figure in the world of Kyoto art crafts, like some of his contemporaries Hattori Shunshō based his mature style on a unique combination of two major constituents within the traditions of East Asian lacquer. The first was his native city’s distinctive maki-e (“sprinkled picture”) technique, using finely powdered precious metals sprinkled onto still-damp lacquer to create pictorial designs. The second, especially during his latter decades, was the raden technique of shell inlay, historically practiced not only in Japan but also in China, Korea, and the Ryukyu Islands (present-day Okinawa). Bold, sometimes semi-abstract shell inlay is a noted feature of lacquer works in the Rinpa decorative style that flourished in Kyoto from the seventeenth century and although Hattori’s approach to the material was very much his own, it contributed to the “Neo-Rimpa” appearance of many of his later works. Like other twentieth-century Japanese artists, he favored the gleaming, lustrous, and very thinly cut shell used here—known generically as yōgai (abalone)—which he imported from Mexico and New Zealand. Born in 1943, from 1963 Hattori exhibited frequently at the Nitten national exhibition and the Kyoto Craft Art exhibition, winning many prizes at both events. In 1975 he was selected by the Bunkachō (Agency for Cultural Affairs) to undertake a tour of Europe and the United States, studying etching in Sweden, working in Paris with the British surrealist Stanley William Hayter, and attending workshops in New York. In 1995 he was granted an audience by His Holiness Pope John Paul II, to whom he presented a lacquered lectern. He exhibited in the Netherlands, New York, and South Korea, and in 2005 was commissioned to create furniture for the Imperial Guest House in Kyoto. Toward the end of his long career Hattori developed a semi-pictorial manner, depicting subjects such as views of Patras Harbor in Greece, sunlight reflected on water or, as here, radical reworkings of traditional Japanese themes such as flowering cherry blossom. Here Hattori evokes the joyful spirit of the annual hanami (cherry-blossom viewing) season, emphasizing the classical origins of the flower as both a literary and a pictorial motif by choosing to name his work Hana no en (A Banquet Celebrating Cherry Blossoms), the title of Chapter 8 of the world-famous eleventh-century novel Genji monogatari. The chapter relates how the young Prince Genji (aged twenty) meets a lover during a cherry-blossom banquet at the palace. The banquet takes places at night, evoked here by the box’s black background and interior, while the bold shell design perhaps suggests the brightness of the moon or palace lanterns.