Object data
nishikie, with metallic pigments
height 137 mm × width 182 mm
Kubota Shunman (attributed to)
Set of Smoking Utensils
Japan, Japan, Japan, Japan, 1804
Provenance
…; purchased from the dealer Hotei Japanese Prints, Leiden, by J.H.W. Goslings (1943-2011), Epse, near Deventer, 1991;1 by whom donated to the museum, 1991
Object number: RP-P-1991-685
Credit line: Gift of J.H.W. Goslings, Epse
Copyright: Public domain
The artist
Kubota Shunman (1757-1820), popularly called Kubo Shunman, was a pupil of Kitao Shigemasa who was also strongly influenced by Torii Kiyonaga and Katsukawa Shuncho. He created an attractive blend of the various ideals of feminine beauty prevalent in his time. He also used the art name Shosado. In addition to designing prints and making paintings, he was a poet and a writer and ran a studio that produced surimono. It was probably in this capacity that he introduced some of the innovations of the mid-Bunka period (1809-13), exploring the concept of large series of shikishiban surimono.
Entry
A set of smoking utensils comprising a pipe wrapped in a piece of cloth and a tobacco pouch made of gold leather with a pattern of various fruits, the silver clasp shaped as two rats. The ojime holding the cords together appears to be a decorative glass bead; the netsuke is a simple wooden manju.
The ensemble undoubtedly represents a luxurious smoking set, gold-leather usually being a European import, although there were many local attempts at imitation.
Three poems by Nagai Akimasu, Oya Atotsugi [later Koshurin Atotsugi, the son of Oya Urasumi],2 and Gofukube Itondo (or Itohito).
Though probably trying to please Gofukube Itondo who, judging from his name, which translates as 'Clan of Honorary Material', seems to have been in the drapery business, the second and third poems are rather conventional, and although the first is hardly evocative, it reads:
Pushing aside the silken flossy snow on the fields, I am going to pick young herbs on the still-damp Mount Nurioke,
-nurioke puns on 'supports for drying cotton', norioke.
Issued by the poets
Unsigned
Literature
M. Forrer, Surimono in the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, Leiden 2013, no. 85
Citation
M. Forrer, 2013, 'attributed to Kubota Shunman, Set of Smoking Utensils, Japan, 1804', in Surimono from the Goslings Collection in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.363255
(accessed 21 September 2024 11:31:16).