Name: A RARE LACQUERED LEATHER AND PAPIER-MÂCHÉ TELESCOPE AND LACQUERED CASE STAND
Brand: EDO PERIOD (18TH CENTURY)
Price: 20000.00 GBP
Availability: SoldOut

A Rare Lacquered Leather and Papier-Mâché Telescope and Lacquered Case Stand
Edo period (18th century)
In five sections, the wider end fitted with a lacquered disc pierced with a central hole to maximise use of the centre of the lens, the largest, outermost section of lacquered leather and the others of lacquered papier-mâché, all decorated, impressed and applied with red, mustard and gold lacquer on a dark brown and black ground with bands and European-style ornament, two covers for both ends; the fitted inner box similarly decorated and two lacquered poles as a stand; an original outer wood box
Telescope 61.5cm. long (when retracted with two end covers), 180cm. long (when fully extended); the inner box 66cm. long, the outer box 69.3cm. long

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Lot Essay

It is believed that the telescope was first imported to Japan as a gift from King James I (1566-1625) to the shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu (1543-1616) in 1613. Since then, at least 169 telescopes were imported to Japan via the Dutch East India Company mainly as tributes to the country’s rulers and, a while after the seclusion policy was executed, making telescopes started in Japan mainly in Nagasaki.¹

For a similar example in the Kobe City Museum collection, go to:
http://www.city.kobe.lg.jp/culture/culture/institution/museum/meihin_new/500.html

1. Kazuho Soeda, Edo jidai no boenkyo to kakucho sareta shikaku no kaigaka [Telescopes in Edo period and pictorialisation of expanded vision], in the research bulletin of Aichi Prefectural museum (2013), vol. 20, p. 25-27 (see http:/www-art.aac.pref.aichi.jp/research/pdf/2013Bulletin_Soeda.pdf)

The well-known opticians in Edo period were Mori Nizaemon (1673-1754) of Nagasaki and Iwahashi Zenbei (1756-1811) of Osaka. The important role played by telescopes, of both European and Japanese manufacture, in the formation of middle- and late-Edo visual culture is discussed in detail in Timon Screech, The Western Scientific Gaze and Popular Imagery in Later Edo Japan, (Cambridge, 1996), especially p. 212-215.