A LACQUER THREE-CASE INRO

This is the sole known example to date of a lacquer inro by Kawanobe Itcho.
Itcho apprenticed to the eminent Koami family of lacquerers when he was twelve years old. The Koami family made lacquers for the Tokugawa family, many commissioned for special occasions. All generations of the family share the high level of skill and reverence for traditional techniques. Itcho was appointed an Imperial Household Artist (Teishitsu gigeiin) in 1896 and around this time he spent ten years making a gold-lacquer chest in traditional style with a lavish all-over pattern of chrysanthemums for the imperial household. For his chest in the Imperial Household Collection, see Nakagawa Chizaki, Meiji no kogei (Meiji art craft), Nihon no bijutsu, no. 41, (Shibundo, 1969), pl. 20. In 1897, he became a professor at the Tokyo School of Fine Arts (the present Tokyo University of the Arts), established only a decade earlier with a department of lacquer art. For examples of his work in the Tokyo National Museum, the Ishikawa Prefectural Museum and the MOA Museum, see Arakawa Hirokazu, Kindai Nihon no shikkogei (Japanese lacquer art of recent times) (Kyoto: Kyoto Shoin, 1985), pls. 42-44.