Japanese Bronze Geese Koro - a Pair

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Description

Japanese Meiji Bronze Goose Koro Incense Burners, a Pair
Meiji Period, Late 19th Century

This pair of Japanese bronze koro, … Read more Japanese Meiji Bronze Goose Koro Incense Burners, a Pair
Meiji Period, Late 19th Century

This pair of Japanese bronze koro, or incense burners, is modeled as two standing geese, their long necks rising in a graceful S-curve to heads thrown back with the bills open, as if calling. Each bird stands firmly on large webbed feet, and the smooth body is finished in a warm reddish-brown patina against which the cast and chased plumage of the back reads in crisp relief.

The back of each goose forms the removable cover of the censer. The folded wings are cast in relief with overlapping coverts rising to a curled scroll at the shoulder, the long flight feathers below finely chased with herringbone barbs, and the tail feathers incised to match. Openings pierced through the cover allow the smoke to escape, so that when incense is burning it drifts upward from the bird's back. The heads are carefully modeled, with crisply defined eyes and the line of the bill picked out, and the bills and webbed feet show a paler, golden tone against the darker patina of the bodies.

The wild goose (gan or kari) holds a long-established place in Japanese art. Its southward migration in autumn was so closely watched that the eighth lunar month was named for the geese's return, and geese descending to land form one of the Eight Views of Ōmi (Ōmi hakkei), a set of lake landscapes adapted from Chinese painting. In Japan, as in China, folk belief also associated geese with fidelity and wedded bliss, which gives a pair such as this an especially apt meaning.

Displayed facing one another, the pair suits a mantel, a console table or the ends of a bookcase, where the rising necks give height and the warm patina sits comfortably with wood, lacquer and natural fibers. They are equally effective as sculpture on a desk or in a library, with or without incense.

Dimensions (each)
Height: 10½ inches (26.7 cm)
Width: 6½ inches (16.5 cm)
Depth: 3½ inches (8.9 cm)

Provenance
Earle D. Vandekar of Knightsbridge

References
Dayton Art Institute, Incense Burner in the Form of a Goose, Japanese, late 19th century, bronze, height 13 inches, gift of Mrs. Virginia W. Kettering, accession no. 2000.70.94.

Merrily Baird, Symbols of Japan: Thematic Motifs in Art and Design (New York: Rizzoli, 2001), pp. 111–112.

Historical Context
The Meiji period (1868–1912) transformed Japanese metalwork. With the country reopened to foreign trade from the late 1850s, and the wearing of swords banned by the Haitōrei edict of 1876, many bronze casters and sword-fittings craftsmen turned their skills to decorative wares. The new government actively promoted the trade after the success of Japan's display at the Vienna World Exposition of 1873, not least through the semi-official export firm Kiryū Kōshō Kaisha (1874–1891). Bird-form censers such as these, a type with a long ancestry in Chinese bronze, were made both for the domestic market and for the Western collectors who acquired Japanese metalwork in quantity during these years.

(Ref: VM98054) See less