Tray
Category
Wooden objects
Date
c. 1600
Materials
Lacquer, Mother-of-pearl [pinctada maxima]
Measurements
50 x 370 mm; 32 mm (Diameter)
Place of origin
Kyoto
Order this imageCollection
Florence Court, County Fermanagh
NT 631009
Summary
A lacquer tray inlaid with mother of pearl, Japanese, early Edo period (1600–1868), c. 1600. In a lobed leaf or flower shape, with upright rims, decorated in gold and mother of pearl on black lacquer in the namban style with a lobed oval image of a pair of lions under a tree in the centre, surrounded by an area inlaid with scattered mother of pearl fragments, a further lobed and pointed border in mother of pearl and an area inlaid with a geometric pattern with mother of pearl and rosettes in gold, with further geometric patterns on the inside of the rim.
Full description
The so-called namban style of decoration was developed by Japanese lacquer artisans in response to Portuguese demand from about 1580. The term namban, meaning 'southern barbarian', was used by the Japanese to refer to the Portuguese and other Europeans, whose ships arrived in Japan from the south. The use of metal foil and mother of pearl on lacquer had already been developed by the Kōami family of artisans in Miyako (present-day Kyoto) in the fifteenth century, but the Portuguese appear to have requested a particularly dense style of decoration, influenced by their familiarity with the objects inlaid with mother of pearl produced in Gujarat, on the western coast of India. The central image with the pair of lions is reminiscent of a pair of striding lions on a screen painted by the artist Kanō Eitoku (1543-90) in the late sixteenth century, now in the collection of the Sannomaru-Shōzōkan (Museum of the Imperial Collections), Tokyo. References: Emile de Bruijn, Borrowed Landscapes: China and Japan in the Historic Houses and Gardens of Britain and Ireland, London, Philip Wilson Publishers in association with the National Trust, 2023, pp. 20-1 (fig. 3), and see further references listed there.
Provenance
Given by the 5th Earl of Enniskillen to Henry Pierce, 1955; donated to the National Trust by his son, Richard Pierce, 2005.