With plovers in flight over a wintery stream, this fine black lacquer inro is decorated with Shibata Zeshin’s distinctive combed wave pattern technique (seigaiha-nuri). Initially recognised for his painting, Zeshin was later renowned for his lacquerwork after studying under the lacquerer Koma Kansai II (1766-1835). Combining his technical mastery of the medium with the originality of his painterly output and tutelage with the Shijo school painter Suzuki Nanrei (1775-1844), Zeshin made significant contributions as a lacquer artist.

An example of this can be seen in Zeshin’s revival of seigaiha-nuri within the lacquerer's repertoire. Recorded to have been invented by Seigai Kanshichi in the Genroku era (1688-1705), the technique is believed to have been lost with no work exhibiting seigaiha-nuri documented between the two centuries separating the artists. A commission from the merchant Matsumoto Heishiro requesting Zeshin to decorate a scabbard with this coating ultimately led to its revival. After three years of research, Zeshin successfully perfected the application. The pattern of concentric waves to poetically denote the sea and other bodies of water had been employed in textiles and woodblock printing amongst other art forms, and was now idiosyncratically applied to the lacquer medium.

To create the pattern, Zeshin first applied a compound of black lacquer with a stiffening agent from beancurd known as shibo urushi. At a precise stage in the drying process, the compound is applied to the object with a serrated tool made from the grooved skull plate of the baleen whale. With the material naturally prone to forming lumps, the application demanded the adroit handwork of the artist; the inflections of the rising, crashing waves on the inro displaying Zeshin’s expert command of the once lost technique.

For similar examples see Eskenazi, Japanese Netsuke, Inro and Lacquer-ware, (London, 1986), no. 52; and M. Kopplin, Ostasiatische Lackkunst Ausgewählte Arbeiten [in the BASF Museum of Lacquer], (Münster, n.d, circa 1992), p. 44.