A WOOD NETSUKE REFERENCING OTA DOKAN Japan, late 18th to early 19th century, Edo period (1615-1868)

A wood netsuke depicting a straw hat, a sickle, and a bundle of yamabuki flowers (yellow wild rose, kerria japonica), all carved on top of a finely incised mino (straw raincoat). The details are finely rendered, and the underside is pierced with large asymmetrical himotoshi. The netsuke references a legend where Ota Dokan, a daimyo who died in 1486, was caught in a storm and was forced to build a shelter, asking a nearby girl to loan him a mino. Instead, she brought him a bundle of yamabuki flowers, signifying by using a clever pun that she has no mino (as mino also means seed, and the double-petaled yamabuki bears no seed).

LENGTH 5.2 cm

Condition: Excellent condition with minor wear.
Provenance: Ex-collection Richard R. Silverman, purchased from Otsuki, Kyoto, in 1972. Richard R. Silverman (1932-2019) was a renowned Asian art collector with one of the largest private collections of netsuke outside of Japan. He lived in Tokyo between 1964 and 1979 and began to collect netsuke there in 1968. Since the 1970s, he wrote and lectured about netsuke and was an Asian art consultant for Christie’s, Sotheby’s, and Bonhams. His gift of 226 ceramic netsuke to the Toledo Museum of Art constitutes perhaps the largest public collection of these miniature clay sculptures in the world. After moving to California, Silverman became a member of the Far Eastern Art Council at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 1984. In 1993, he joined LACMA’s Executive Board. He served on the board of directors for the International Society of Appraisers from 1986 to 1994 and served nine years as chair for the City of West Hollywood Fine Arts Commission. Richard Silverman was posthumously awarded the Order of the Rising Sun for his decades-long promotion of Japanese culture.

Auction comparison:
A closely related, but slightly smaller netsuke was sold at Zacke, Fine Netsuke & Sagemono, 25 September 2020, Vienna, lot 15 (sold for 1,138 EUR).