Eine Welt auf einem Messergriff
Travellers by the River, Hosono Masamori
A kozuka of grey shibuichi, and on it a whole stretch of country. Fine horizontal lines run across the upper field like mist over water. Along the banks walk travellers no taller than a grain of rice, most of them under triangular straw hats, some carrying loads. Trees stand between them in silver and shakudo. Short bridges of gold and copper span the water. The scene is best seen close, turned slowly in the light.
Das Objekt
The figures, trees and bridges are cut from gold, silver, copper and shakudo and set flush into the ground, hira-zogan, so that the surface stays flat. The mist and the water are engraved. The back is plain shibuichi. It is signed Hosono Sozaemon Masamori, 細野惣左衛門政守, with a kao.
Masamori
The Brooklyn Museum holds a kozuka and kogai in shibuichi, copper, gold and shakudo signed in the same way, Hosono Sozaemon Masamori, and dates them to the eighteenth century. The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, keeps a kozuka with scenes along a river under his name, shibuichi with flat colour inlay and katakiri-bori. Other kozuka in Boston show a castle with a moat and passenger boats, or a torii among trees. The river and the road, crowded with small people, are his subject.
Henri Joly und B. W. Robinson
B. W. Robinson, in his catalogue, cites Henri Joly on the Red Cross loan exhibition of 1915. Masamori’s minute work, Joly wrote, had been widely imitated, and genuine pieces almost defy photographic reproduction. Robinson also points to Masamori’s portrait among the Sanko nijuhachi kisho, the portraits of twenty-eight metalworkers, as a sign of the esteem in which his work was held. The kozuka is dated, like the museum pieces, to the eighteenth century.
Eine Korrektur
An earlier version of this page said that the back carried an inscription naming the subject. It carries only the signature and kao. It also dated the kozuka to the Genroku era; the eighteenth century is the safer date.
Kozuka by Hosono Masamori
Kozuka. Signiert Hosono Sozaemon Masamori mit Kao. Shibuichi migaki-ji, hira-zogan in kin, gin, akagane und shakudo, kebori. Reisende am Fluss. Mittlere Edo-Zeit. Privatsammlung, erworben in Japan.
In the collection
- Type
- Tosogu › Kozuka
- School
- Hosono
- Period
- Edo-Zeit › Mittlere Edo-Zeit
- Material
- Shibuichi
- Motif
- Mensch und LegendeLandschaft
