Box for Inkstone and Writing Implements (Suzuribako)

Japan

Not on view

With its wooden arched bridge, weirs of rocks in bamboo baskets and riverside willow, this landscape suggests the Bridge at Uji south of Kyoto, a place famed as a site of tragic romance in the Tale of Genji. Here, the novel motif of fireflies in black lacquer with highlights of iridescent shell adds a temporal note of summer evening to the scene.

Box for Inkstone and Writing Implements (Suzuribako), Wood, lacquer sprinkled with gold, black lacquer, and shell inlay, Japan

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