Inro Makie Shibayama Lady

Description

Item: 

Edo period or Early Meiji Era. 19th century.

Inro Makie Shibayama Lady. A beautiful inro of exceptional quality depicting a woman cleaning her clothes. small mother of pearl inlays on the tree trunk and silver details on the woman’s dress and accessories, the inro retains all its detail and is in a fantastic state of preservation, just a couple of small bumps of use on the upper part. Early Meiji or late edo. XIX century.

9,0 x 6,0 cm

What is an Inro?

An inro is a traditional Japanese case for holding small objects, suspended from the obi (sash) worn around the waist when wearing a kimono. They are often highly decorated with various materials such as lacquer and various techniques such as maki-e, and are more decorative than other Japanese lacquerware.

Because traditional Japanese dress lacked pockets, objects were often carried by hanging them from the obi in containers known as sagemono (a hanging object attached to a sash). Most sagemono were created for specialized contents, such as tobacco, pipes, writing brush and ink, but the type known as inro is suitable for carrying small things, and was created in the Sengoku period (1467–1615) as a portable identity seal and medicine container for travel.