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Barnebys HQ
Brahegatan 10
BOX 5038
114 37 Stockholm
All auctions / Asian Art / Japanese Meiji Enamel Buckle | Nikko Shrine Gate, Mount Fuji, Gilt Brass
East Asia, Japan, Meiji period. A miniature circular buckle of gilt and enameled brass, its domed face carrying a polychrome Satsuma-style scene of an ornate multi-tiered shrine gate. Vermilion, cobalt, turquoise, coral, and white enamels build the bracket complex and paneled doors, every rafter and balustrade traced in fine gilt line work, while ranks of cryptomeria climb the slopes behind and a snow-capped conical peak, almost certainly Mt. Fuji, floats above a band of gilt-stippled cloud. A running key-fret meander chases the surrounding border. The relief is high enough that the architecture reads sculpturally against the pale sky. Objects of this type were made in quantity for the export and tourist trade, the brass mount lending jewel-like weight to what is essentially a painted enamel cabinet picture worn at the waist, and frequently later converted to a brooch or sash ornament. The gate is plausibly the Yomeimon of the Toshogu shrine at Nikko, mausoleum complex of Tokugawa Ieyasu and the most photographed, most copied piece of architecture in 19th century Japan. Nicknamed the Higurashi-no-mon, the "gate one can gaze at until sundown", its surfaces carry more than five hundred carvings of sages, dragons, qilin, and peonies beneath a canopy of gold leaf and lacquer, precisely the dense chromatic clutter the enameller has compressed here into a panel the size of a coin. Nikko and Mt. Fuji were the two obligatory motifs of the Meiji export workshops, and their pairing on a single buckle amounts to visual shorthand for Japan itself, assembled for Western buyers arriving through the treaty ports. The gilding on such mounts was applied in areas of markedly high purity, giving the warm, slightly reddish tone visible across the fret border and the raised gilt detailing of the gate. Item # 205056
Estimate:£113.09
To the auctionView all items fromArtemis Fine ArtsorAsian Art
Estimate:
£113.09
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