Featured Japanese lacquered Kogo/incense box with golden Maki-e

This is my first purchase from an online auction in Japan two weeks ago and everything turns out great!

It’s a vintage incense box/Kogo in Japanese, probably mid to late 20th century. The box that it came with is signed by Hyokan Kawase the Second( forgot to photograph that myself so just used seller’s image).

It’s painted with vegetable grasshopper and another bug which I cannot tell what it exactly is, resting among balloon flowers (?) and grass ( what Japanese called as autumn grass in general). The glitter in the background makes it look like starry evening sky, and the reflection of the light on works as a moon that actually rises and falls, if you turn your head around!

Enjoy!

 

So pretty!! I love him.

 

Little firefly( or is it?) at lower left: “what about me?”

 

So delicate, a beautiful kogo. Always good to see when arts are continued in this day of mass production.

That is what I thought too.

 

And this kogo almost came with a mass-production price… which is only enough to by a box made of resin and artificial lacquer today in Japan

 

Beautiful!

 

Ooohh, very nice!
And... You know what? I love the bugs too

 

Vegetable grasshopper is one of the few bugs I’m unafraid to touch we have a lot of them in the field and I enjoyed hunting them when I was younger

 

It's a cute little box. I like the grasshopper far more than the ants that are scouting my kitchen since it's August and that's what ants do.

 

Beautiful design. Very nice.

 

Our kitchen is on the second floor so I barely find ants. But sometimes there are ant-sized baby grasshoppers, probably being taken in with vegetables surprised to know baby grasshoppers are just mini version of the adult ones!

 

You get free pets with the vegetables? (LOL) Or do you let them go? I'm told they also make good bird and lizard food.

 

They can jump very far, and given their tiny size, every time I try to touch them they instantly varnish

 

oops. And then you find them at 2AM, or at least hear them, when they sound off!

 

That is beautiful! Thank you for sharing the photos.