Project Description
Wood netsuke of Tekkai Sennin by Shoshin
The sennin stands on one foot as if walking, one hand and his chin resting on the handle of his staff, his mouth shut tight. The lobe of each ear is pierced with a ring, and typically for the artist, the long eyebrows hang down creating arches between them and the temples. His tattered robes billow around his emaciated body and his shoulders are draped with a mugwort leaf cape. His downcast eyes are double inlaid in dark and light horn
Compare with an almost identical netsuke in the Sydney L. Moss catalogue, More Things in Heaven and Earth, London 2006, pages 88-89, no 37. A variant, with open mouth and ivory inlaid teeth, was published in an article on Soshin by Jay Hopkins in the International Netsuke Society Journal, Vol. 30 No. 2 Summer 2010, front cover and page 15. In this last there is a close up of the face, showing the distinctive hanging eyebrows
Unsigned. Kansai, circa 1800
Height 5.3cm
MR4662
