Japanese Ivory Basket Seller
October
Japanese Ivory Basket Seller
All types of ivory were used by the Japanese carver to make netsuke. These small carvings were used as toggles for little lidded lacquerwork containers worn by men as part of their traditional costume. Netsuke quickly became popular outside Japan and specialist carvers began to produce much larger ivory carvings to meet the demands of a European market. The sources of the ivory were elephant tusks, both recent and fossil, mammoth tusks, hippo teeth, the tusks of walrus and narwhal and the teeth of the cachalot whale.
This large statuette, okimono, was made about 1890 by the carver Toshimasa, who was famous for carving netsuke. The family crest of the basket seller appears on a small pearlshell disc and on the red circles on the baskets.
The basket seller is currently touring in the travelling exhibition, Japan in Belfast, as part of the Ulster Museum’s Outreach Programme.
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