Artworks

Toiletry box with Mount Hōrai

Artwork · Anonymous · 13th century · box · Kyoto National Museum

A small toiletry box of black lacquer, painted on four sides in gold maki-e with flying geese and trees — pure kara-e: Mount Hōrai, the Daoist mountain of the elixir of immortality, with a weathered rock and a stunted cypress by a lake (such rocks came from a lake near Hangzhou) and two groups of geese flying south, an image of the coming of winter. 1 Mason 2005, p. 178, fig. 205. ↩ Literatur Mason 2005: Penelope E. Mason, History of Japanese Art, 2nd, Pearson Education LTD. 2005.