Mingei Arts

Today, the rhinoceros no longer roams the landscape of China Proper along the lower region of the Yellow River. The ever-increasing scarcity of the rhinoceros in the Tang Dynasty (618-907) made its horn eternally precious. The Tang dress code required that the emperor and the crown prince alone could use hairpins made of ‘rhino’ horn [...]

Asia is the native home of the Water Buffalo, and carved horn represents one of a kind pieces in which the artist has taken special care to choose the right shaped horn to carve and polish into a beautiful form. Water Buffaloes are domestic farm animals across Asia. They are loved and valued as a [...]

The Japanese word for peapod is “eda mame” and literally means “twig bean” and refers to young soybeans cropped with their twigs. The earliest solid reference to the green vegetable dates from the year 1275, when the well-known Japanese monk, Nichiren Shonin, wrote a note thanking a parishioner for the gift of “eda mame” he had left at [...]

Usofuki is a legendary character in Japan. Usofuki, also known as Hyottoko, was a boy namedHyoutokusu from which the character’s name originated. Hyoutokusu made strange clown faces and was said to create gold out of his belly button (hence why this piece was encased using gold). While the grooved gold setting was applied mid-20th/c, the ivory carving itself is intact and [...]

Pictured is a beautiful set of rare Japanese handmade Fuchin from the 1900s, in excellent, original condition. They have a metal weight for the interior that is encased, (just like an egg,) with a wonderful braiding technique similar to the Haori-himo, which is a jacket tie, and delicate netting over the outer edges of the piece. [...]

The quality of stone appropriate for ink stones is found in only a few places. Although the ink stone was invented by the Chinese, in Japan, 90% of ink stones are made in Ogatsu, which is in the Miyagi prefecture in the northern part of Japan. The Japanese term for the best grades of slate [...]

A 1920s-30s Incense container in Mulberry wood for the tea ceremony. Simply beautiful, and beautifully simple in its execution. While this type of container will often be plain, as it is used during the warmer months in Japan, this special Kogo is inlaid with a 16-petal Chrysanthemum, (Kiku), which is the crest of Japan’s Imperial [...]

The netsuke is a personal decoration, a handling piece, dating back to the 17th century Japan. It was a well known tradition to buy a Shunga for newly married couples, and was typically used as a sexual guide for the children of wealthy families in Japan. Here you see the combination of male and female [...]