MYOCHIN: AN IRON JIZAI OKIMONO OF A LOBSTER

By a member of the Myochin family, signed Myochin
Japan, 18^th-19^th century, Edo period (1615-1868)

Naturalistically modeled, formed from individually cast, hammered and carved sections crafted to resemble the shell of a lobster and assembled with joints enabling the model to be fully articulated with movable body, feelers, limbs, and eyes. Finely chiseled and incised details on the torso and tail of the crustacean and lifelike bent antennae. Contained in a wooden storage box, signed to the underside of the lobster MYOCHIN.

LENGHT 33 cm (with feelers extended)
WEIGHT 102 g

Condition: Excellent condition with minor wear, manufacturing irregularities, and expected areas of corrosion.
Provenance: Bonhams, Fine Japanese Art, 10 November 2011, London, lot 375. The Saoud bin Mohammed Ali Al-Thani Foundation, acquired from the above, and subsequently deaccessed. Saoud bin Mohammed Ali Al-Thani (1966-2014) was a Qatari prince who served as minister of Culture, Arts and Heritage. By the turn of the 21st century, Sheikh Saoud had established an international reputation as an avid art collector, both for his own collection as well as those of several state-owned museums he oversaw in Qatar. Sheikh Saoud’s legacy as a collector is remarkable, as he laid the foundations of the major collections of Qatar Museums. In 2021, the Museum of Islamic Art hosted an exhibition in tribute to the legendary collector, titled A Falcon's Eye: Tribute to Sheikh Saoud Al-Thani.

The basic principle of Japanese armor is its flexibility, being composed of a great number of small, lacquered metal plates laced together in rows allowing freedom of movement. It is this freedom which gave rise to the word jizai to describe jizai okimono, or articulated ornaments. The subjects of the jizai okimono makers are chiefly dragons, snakes, crustaceans, birds, insects – any such creatures whose articulating feathers and scales protect them from harm, as do indeed the articulating components of a Japanese armor. Meticulously constructed with hammered plates of iron, these articulated figures were greatly sought after for decorative use and were the object of entertainment and discussion.

The Myochin family was the most successful of the numerous dynasties of professional armorers that originated in late-medieval Japan. In the Edo period (1615-1868) the family opened branches not just in the major cities but also in the chief towns of many provincial fiefs where they turned out vast quantities of cuirasses, helmets, face masks, and other components that were needed for samurai armor. Myochin craftsmen were highly accomplished in using tiny rivets to join multiple iron plates, creating protection that was both relatively light and highly flexible; over time, they repurposed their skills to make ingenious and astonishingly lifelike articulated models of snakes, fishes, crustaceans, and insects. While early examples were purchased by the Myochin family's established senior samurai clientele, during the Meiji era they caught the attention of foreign buyers and earned praise from Japanese semi-official commentators such as a writer for Bijutsu Gaho (The Magazine of Art) who drew attention in 1894 to one example's “[…] aptitude […] in wrought or hammered iron […] beautiful execution and tone of color given to the material, alone, not to say anything about the ingenious arrangement.”

Auction comparison:
Compare a closely related lacquered-metal jizai okimono of a lobster, dated to the Edo period, 17.6 cm long, at Christie’s, Japanese and Korean Art, 22 September 2005, New York, lot 244 (sold for USD 11,400 or approx. EUR 17,000 converted and adjusted for inflation at the time of writing).