Nanban art (南蛮美術) refers to Japanese art of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries influenced by contact with the Namban or Southern barbarians, traders and missionaries from Europe and specifically from Portugal. > Namban art developed after the first Portuguese ships arrived in Kyushu in 1543. Artists of the Kanō school were joined by those of the Tosa school in combining foreign subject matter with Japanese styles of painting and lacquer. > In 1580, the Pope Gregory XIII gave to Portugal exclusive rights to maritime trade east of the Red Sea to as far as seventeen degrees east of the Moluccas (in todays eastern Indonesia). Like this, Japan became one of most wanted sources for objects that could be imported to Europe to sell as luxury and exotic items. In the beginning, nanban objects inlaid with mother-of-pearl were acquired by the Portuguese from Gujarat in India but, in a few years, Japan became a direct source to feed European demand. > > The persecution and prohibition of Christianity from the end of the sixteenth century and the Tokugawa policy of sakoku that largely closed Japan to foreign contact from the 1630s saw the decline of Namban art. > > The Namban objects were constructed from wood that was joined with both tiny wooden dowels and a variety of nails. The wood was then coated with several layers of true black asian lacquer, called urushi. Urushi comes from the sap of the Rhus verniciflua tree, which is native to several parts of Asia. Typically, multiple thin layers of urushi were applied to an object, progressing from coarser ground layers to fine, pigmented upper layers. The mother-of-pearl shell would have been adhered to the box surface before the layers of lacquer were brushed wet over the entire box. Once dry, the surface was polished until the shell and lacquer were flush. The silver and gold decoration was created using the hiramaki-e technique where metallic powder is sprinkled onto wet lacquer applied in the design area. The final urushi layers on the Namban Chest would have been polished to a high sheen. The decorative metal hardware appears to be made from a copper-based metal that was gilded. > > Similar examples are in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum (New York), the Ashmolean Museum (Oxford), the National Art&Crafts Museum (Madrid) and the Itsuo Museum of Art (Osaka). > > Bibliography: > > Bennett, J., & A. Reigle Newland, The Golden Journey: Japanese Art from Australian Collections, Art Gallery of South Australia, 2009. > Cattaneo, A., et al, Portugal and the World: In the 16th and 17th Centuries, Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, Lisbon, 2009. > Instituto dos Museus e da Conservacao, 2009. > Flores, J.M. et al, Os Constructores do Oriente Portugues, Comissao Nacional para as Comemoracoes dos Descobrimentos Portugueses, 1998. This cabinet is an example of one of the earliest types of Japanese export lacquer. It is based on the European varqueno, a decorated writing cabinet with a hinged front panel. Such cabinets were made for the Spanish and Portuguese trade in the last quarter of the sixteenth century. This example has eleven recessed drawers in four rows. The central drawer is embellished with a projecting arch, while the others are framed with protruding rims. A 1615 Dutch East India Company record shows exchanges with Japanese maki-e (“sprinkled design”) producers regarding whether or not to include arches and rims. The decoration of the cabinet reflects the mélange of sources that gave birth to the exuberant expression of the Momoyama age. Made by Kyoto craftsmen, this cabinet is marked by a horror vacui alien to traditional Japanese design. It combines maki-e with mother-of-pearl inlay and bands of geometric decoration. On its top, a vibrant scene of pheasants and swallows amid wisteria-laden pines looks like a design for a bold, golden folding screen, while still more birds fly about maples and flowering trees on its sides. A scene of Heian-period courtiers traveling in a palanquin, visible on the front when the cabinet is closed, is rare for export cabinets of this type. The taste for the exotic that marked this period of international influence in Japan, from about 1570 to 1630—when trade extended from Spain to India, Southeast Asia, Indonesia, the Far Eastern regions of Korea, the Ryūkyū Islands, and South China—is exemplified in this cabinet For Sale
Posted on: Sun, 04 Jan 2015 13:27:16 +0000
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