Museum accessions

Magazine Antiques, Sept, 1996 by Eleanor H. Gustafson

Beginning in the Momoyama period (1573-1615) in Japan, wooden two-panel sliding doors (fusuma) were commonly installed in the magnificent castles of feudal lords (daimyo) and military overlords (shoguns), their painted and gilded decoration brightening these often dark interiors. As is true of so many Oriental decorative arts, the motifs used generally had specific symbolic meanings, exemplified in the exquisite door panel shown here that was recently acquired by the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas. Decorated with gesso mixed with various pigments and gold, the panel displays an eagle (almost certainly representing the samurai class in Japan) that is perched upon the branch of a blossoming cherry tree, one of the most ubiquitous symbols in Japanese art. Legends abound about the cherry tree in Japan, and its blooms are a favorite symbol of spring. Beyond this, however, the flowers were also likened to the life of a samurai warrior - glorious but often brief - and it was presumably in this context that they were used on this castle-door panel.

Illustrated below is a tour de force from the classical period of French paperweight making - the famous so-called gingham weight - made by the Saint-Louis Glass Factory and recently acquired by the Corning Museum of Glass in Corning, New York. The complicated process of making the weight is thought to have been achieved by gathering together the two colors of overlay glass and then blowing a bubble. This was folded over the colorless core with the bouquet, and then annealed. The opaque overlay colors were then cut away with a small wheel to produce the gingham-like pattern and the whole was reheated and encased in a layer of colorless glass, before being annealed for the last time. Undoubtedly made not for sale but to demonstrate the skills of the craftsmen at the Saint-Louis factory, the weight is near perfect in execution.