Box
Category
Objets de vertu
Date
1670 - 1799
Materials
Lacquer
Measurements
40 mm (Height); 110 mm (Diameter)
Order this imageCollection
Charlecote Park, Warwickshire
NT 534187.5
Summary
Box (kobako or ‘small box’), lacquer, round with a flat base and lid, made in Japan, late seventeenth or eighteenth century. It is decorated on the lid and the sides with pavilions and bridges among trees, rocks and water in hiramaki-e (low relief pictorial lacquer) and takamaki-e (high relief pictorial lacquer) on a black ground, the rocks accentuated with kirigane (rectangular- or square-cut gold flakes). The inside of the box is decorated with nashiji (‘pear skin’) lacquer.
Full description
Small Japanese lacquer boxes (called kobako or ‘small box’) were often transported to Europe through private trade by servants of the Dutch East India Company (i). This box was from the collection of William Thomas Beckford (1760-1844). Beckford used his wealth made from enslaved labour to amass a collection of East Asian lacquers, partially inspired by his interest in French society (ii). He put his collection and home, Fonthill Abbey, up for auction in 1822 after financial troubles and the decline in profits from sugar produced from enslaved labour. The auction was cancelled after Beckford sold the abbey and its contents privately (iii). The collection was later put to auction by the buyer in 1823 (iv). At the auction, this box was purchased by George Hammond Lucy (1789-1845) as lot 999 for £4.4s (v). It is likely one of the lacquerware pieces described by Mary Elizabeth Lucy (1803-1890) as ‘on the lacquer table in the billiard room’ in 1862 (vi). (i) Oliver Impey and John Whitehead, ‘Japanese Lacquer’ in Derek E. Ostergard, William Beckford 1760-1844: An Eye for the Magnificent, (New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 2001), pp 218-219. (ii) Anne Eschpasse, ‘William Beckford in Paris, 1788-1814: “Le Faste Solitaire”’, in Derek E. Ostergard (ed.), William Beckford 1760-1844: An Eye for the Magnificent, (New York and London: Yale University Press, 2001), pp.99-115 (iii) See Boyd Alexander, (trans. and ed.). Life at Fonthill 1807-1822 With Interludes in Paris and London. From the Correspondence of William Beckford, (London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1957); England’s Wealthiest Son: A Study of William Beckford, (London: Centaur Press Lt., 1962) (iv) Caroline Dakers, ‘The break-up of the Fonthill Estate’ in Dakers (ed.), Fonthill Recovered: A Cultural History, (London: UCL Press, 2018), pp. 97-98 (v) Warwickshire County Record Office, L6/1116 (vi) Mary Elizabeth Lucy, Biography of the Lucy Family at Charlecote Park in the County of Warwick, (London: privately printed by Emily Faithful & Co, 1862), p.131