Project Description

**SOLD** Wood netsuke of a wild cat by Tomokazu 

The powerful beast is seated licking its left forepaw. The eyes are double inlays of translucent horn with dark horn pupils and two visible canines are of bone

Signed: Tomokazu.  Gifu. Circa 1830

Length: 4.3 cm

Provenance: 

Sale, Sotheby’s Lonodon, 10th June 1977, lot 65

Alain Ducros, Paris

Exhibited: 

State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, ‘Netsuke, Japanese Miniature Sculptures from Private Collections’, July-October 2016,no. 80 in the catalogue, described as a lion

Literature:

B. Hurtig, in ‘What’s New at the Auctions’ in JINCS, 5/2, p. 7

Alain Ducros, ‘Netsuke et Sagemono 2’, 1987, pp. 82-83, no. 115, described as a tiger

MR2642