Writing Box (Suzuribako) with “The Lady of the Bridge” Design

Japan

Not on view

The exterior of this writing box shows two aristocratic ladies reading a letter on a veranda, surrounded by a garden of autumn grasses. The first two lines of a poem from the Collection of Poems Ancient and Modern (Kokin wakashū, ca. 905) are inscribed in inlaid characters on the lid’s exterior and continue on the interior, after which readers are left to complete the poem:

Does she wait for me
Again tonight, having spread
But a single robe
On her woven rush matting—
The maiden at Uji Bridge?

—Translation by H. C. McCullough

The scene and the poem might refer to the Genji chapter “The Divine Princess at Uji Bridge” (Hashihime).

Writing Box (Suzuribako) with “The Lady of the Bridge” Design, Lacquered wood with gold and silver takamaki-e and hiramaki-e, and silver inlay on gold nashiji (“pear-skin”) ground, Japan

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Writing Box (Suzuribako) with “The Lady of the Bridge” Design, Lacquered wood with gold and silver takamaki-e and hiramaki-e, and silver inlay on gold nashiji (“pear-skin”) ground, Japan
Writing Box (Suzuribako) with “The Lady of the Bridge” Design, Lacquered wood with gold and silver takamaki-e and hiramaki-e, and silver inlay on gold nashiji (“pear-skin”) ground, Japan

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