REIGEN: A WOOD NETSUKE OF A DRAGON HATCHLING By Geijo Reigen (born 1935), signed Reigen
Japan, c. 1970

Published: Lazarnick, George (1981) Netsuke & Inro Artists, and How to Read Their Signatures, Vol. 2, p. 866.

An attractively compact netsuke, finely carved and stained as a dragon emerging from an egg and baying its head. The scales and flaming body are finely incised, the tail at the back sweeps to the side. Large, asymmetrical himotoshi underneath and signed REIGEN.

HEIGHT 3.6 cm

Condition: Excellent condition.
Provenance: Ex-collection Richard R. Silverman, purchased from Wakayama, Tokyo, in 1976. 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.