Small box with a country house

Kamisaka Sekka was one of the most significant designers in Japan during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. By the age of 16 he had travelled to Europe to study industrial design principals and displayed his work in a number of exhibitions in his hometown of Kyoto, as well as at the 1915 San Francisco Great Exhibition. Sekka is considered a leading innovator of modern Japanese design.

Small box with a country house is a fine work in lacquer with delicate inlay in mother of pearl. The country house is reminiscent of the huts illustrated in Kamisaka Sekka’s 1909 three volume woodblock-printed book World of things. Inspired by the elaborate exuberance of Rinpa design, Sekka reduced it to its essence and designed items with a simplified, minimalist quality such as this house in intricate gold lacquer. Although fascinated by modern design and materials, Sekka also looked to the past. He established the Reed Painting Society to revive reed painting techniques of the 11th century and later contributed new designs to be created using the lacquerware tradition.