Artworks

Saddle with clover and spider webs

Artwork · Anonymous · 12th century · saddle · Tokyo National Museum

A saddle of black lacquer inlaid with mother-of-pearl: sprays of bush clover and spider webs, motifs of poetry and the seasons, cover the surface without crowding it. Probably made for a ceremonial procession in the capital and never used outside it; Mason sets its elegant, balanced Japanese taste against the dense Chinese-derived pattern of the Chūsonji altar table. 1 Mason 2005, p. 107, fig. 132. ↩ Literatur Mason 2005: Penelope E. Mason, History of Japanese Art, 2nd, Pearson Education LTD. 2005.