BGuthrie Photos: MD -- Baltimore -- Walters Art Museum -- Asian Artworks

MD -- Baltimore -- Walters Art Museum -- Asian Artworks:

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Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
1. WALTAS_090103_100.JPG: Tobacco Pipes and Pouches: Tobacco was brought o Japan from the New World by Portuguese sailors in the middle of the 16th century. The tobacco plant soon became widely cultivated, and by the second half of the 17th century smokers included men and women of all classes. The tiny bowls of the pipes, based on Central and South American models, never permitted more than about three puffs before emptying, refilling, and relighting. Especially in the winter, smoking took place around the brazier, where a burning ember could always be found. Tobacco was carried in either a hard box (tonkotsu) or a soft pouch (tabako-ire) of tooled leather, snakeskin, or embroidered fabric. A portable smoking set included a pipe, a pipe case, and either a pouch or a box. These sets were carried at the sash like an inro, sometimes with a separate netsuke, sometimes with the pipe case used as a netsuke over the sash, securing the dangling pouch. One didn't carry both inro and a tobacco punch. The inro was more for aristocrats and the military elite. Actors and sumo wrestlers were among those who tended to carry smoking sets.
2. WALTAS_090103_144.JPG: Japanese Netsuke 18th-19th centuries: The variety of netsuke subjects is astonishing. Legend and the theater are a source for human figures; animal subjects go well beyond the popular rat, ox, tiger, hare, and other creatures that are the names of the years in the twelve-year cycle of the traditional calendar. When the wearing and collecting of netsuke mushroomed in the 18th century, carvers of masks and false teeth were among those drawn to the netsuke-carving profession, and many turned for inspiration to fresh sources, such as books illustrating Chinese mythology. The work of the best 18th-century carvers was already being forged in their lifetimes. When the name of a craftsman appears on a netsuke on view here, his name and date are indicated on the label, and no attempt is made to identify copies or forgeries. According to some scholars, such attempts may be futile. The older netsuke tend to be the most functional; robust, with obvious holes through which to thread the cord, and composed in a way so that they look good dangling over the upper edge of a sash. Beginning in the late 18th century there was a move towards a more precise realism.
3. WALTAS_090103_234.JPG: Sword Blades: The Japanese sword blade is a powerful weapon, an object of striking beauty, and a work with a spiritual aura. It is also an unsurpassed technological achievement. The iron ore goes to the smelter, and a portion of the steel produced can be sent on to the swordsmith. He takes chunks of steel, welds them together at the forge, and turns them into a bar that is subjected to heating, hammering, clefting, and folding some thirteen to twenty times, so that the original chunks become the layers (16,000 or more per inch) in the dough of the bar. How the surface grain formed by the layers looks depends on whether the bar was folded lengthwise or crosswise and on how it was hammered. This bar is then wrapped around another -- of softer steel, for strength -- and shaped into a sword. The edge of the blade is hardened by heating it and thrusting it into water. Before the sword is sent away to the equally expert polisher, grooves can be cut with a draw knife, and decorative carvings cut with chisels and a hammer. Finally the smith will chisel his signature onto the tang.
4. WALTAS_090103_235.JPG: Weaponry and the Samurai: When a period of internal strife came to an end in 1615, no one could have foreseen that a time of peace would last so long. The Tokugawa-family military rulers (shoguns, the emperor's generalissimos), ruling from Edo (modern Tokyo), succeeded one another until 1868. The nation became isolated from the outside world. No army left Japan, and no army invaded. The military had no wars to fight. Yet the role of warriors and of warrior values (bushi-do, "the way of the warrior") was considerable. The samurai, the hereditary military class, comprised about 7% of the population, and they served any one of the several hundred provincial military lords (daimyo). A samurai might hold an official position, or he might have only his minimal stipend and be forced into a profession (crafts, most commonly), but having been born a samurai he would be conscious of his obligation to uphold loyalty and to maintain right and order. "Every morning make up thy mind how to die," the samurai in the service of one daimyo were told. "When thy mind is always set on death, the way through life will always be straight and simple." Only the samurai were entitled to wear a pair of swords, one long, one short. (Commoners could carry a single short sword.) Sword blades were passed down from generation to generation, and no object was more important to a samurai. In 1868, the Meiji revolution brought an end to the long period of rule by the shogun and the daimyo. The hereditary rights of the samurai were abolished, and the 1876 decree that samurai could no longer wear swords changed an ancient way of life forever. Swords came onto the market (a number of them ending up in the West), and makers of the sword fittings turned to the production of metal boxes and other objects that could be sent to the international expositions.
5. WALTAS_090103_244.JPG: The Mounting of a Japanese Sword: Sword blades were passed down from generation to generation and regularly received new mountings. Most of the mounted swords in the Walters collection were designed to be inserted in the sash at the left waist, in a position close to horizontal, and with the edge of the blade facing upward. The bearer could quickly grasp the hilt with his right hand and secure the scabbard with his left. On the side of the scabbard next to the wearer's body there is usually placed a utility knife (kozuka). On the side facing away from the wearer is the loop for the tying cord. On the same side are sometimes placed kogai, skewers that could be used to arrange the warrior's hair. (The dismantled sword has no kogai.) This arrangement is reflected in the organization of the sword guard or tsuba, the top face of which can be easily viewed by someone facing the sword bearer. The central opening is for the blade, with the edge at the top. The left hand opening (the one next to the wearer's body) is for the utility knife. The right hand opening, the lobed one, is for the kogai. One or both of these side openings may be filled in if the mounting in which the tsuba was used did not include the kozuka or the kogai.
6. WALTAS_090103_263.JPG: Sword Guards (Tsuba) 17th and 18th centuries Like other craftsmen, the makers of tsuba belongs to many different schools. When fashions changed, some tsuba makers would proudly stick to the traditions of their teachers; others would proudly stick to the traditions of their teachers; others would adapt to demand, even tot he point of inscribing the false signature of a famed craftsman. Forgeries may be contemporary, or they may be later, made for 19th-century collectors. For all these reasons, the study of tsuba is a battleground nearly as dangerous as the actual sword blades. In one early type of sword guard (1-2), the surface of the tsuba is used as a ground for a overall pattern of flowers, with every part having an equal weight. In another early type (3-4) the approach is entirely different: a miniature landscape appears on the tsuba. Even within this small frame, it is possible to suggest great distances. In the 19th century limitations of this type were produced using an antique iron body. The majority of 16th- and 17th-century tsuba were openwork iron, and this tradition continued into the 18th century, but with an increased interest in detail and in complex, delicate rhythms (5)--rhythms that can also characterize inlaid work (6). In the first half of the 18th century, several well-known craftsmen started to produce engraved copper or copper allow tsuba, sometimes combined with relief work (7-9). In the best of these, the engraved line swells and narrows like brushed ink. Another 18th-century development was of pictorial carved openwork tsuba (11-12), in which the negative, openwork spaces are a powerful component of the design.
7. WALTAS_090103_312.JPG: Sword Fittings: Tokens of Power and Luck: Themes taken from nature may help the samurai prepare his mind for death (see the far panel). Those who carried a sword could also choose fittings decorated with a deity thought to bestow strength or good fortune. Many of these talismanic figures are Chinese in origin -- some long known in Japan, others not popular until the 18th and 19th centuries, when printed editions of the Chinese military novel Romance of Three Kingdoms became widely available and when schooling included the Chinese Confucian classics. For ferocity of behavior and adeptness at the martial arts, no hero surpassed Shoki the Demon Quelier (1-2), originally the Chinese Chung K'uei, who appeared to a T'ang emperor in a dream and promised the expulsion of all the devils in the empire. Other models of fierceness include the thunder gods (5), a traditional guardian at the gate of a Buddhist temple (6), a tiger (7), and a hawk (7). Loyalty is exemplified by the three warrior heroes of Han China (4), characters in the Romance of Three Kingdoms. Taoist immortals (8-12) were legendary figures who had discovered the secrets of longevity and possessed various other powers. In China, a cure group of eight was frequently depicted flying over the sea to a western paradise, and this theme sometimes appears on sword fittings (12). More frequently, they were shown singly. Certain animals -- notably the crane (13-14) -- have strong associations with the longevity of the Taoist immortals. The rabbit that dwells in the moon (15, 17) pounds out an elixir of immortality, and the divine tortoise (16) lives a thousand years. The Seven Gods of Good Fortune(18-20) were brought together as a group of popular deities in the 17th century. Sometimes either they or their attributes are all shown aboard a treasure-laden ship (20), Hosei (18) is god of contentment. Ultimately Indian in origin, Daikoku (with his rice bale and jewels), stands for wealth in minerals and cereals (19). A purely Japanese deity, Ebisu, lord of daily food, holds a fish basket (18).
8. WALTAS_090103_667.JPG: The Japanese Study: This room has been installed as if it were the 1880s study of an American collector. The Japanese pavilion at the 1876 Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia excited thousands of Americans and had a permanent effect on American taste. William Walters and his son Henry, who had become collectors of Chinese and Japanese art in the 1860s, bought several hundred objects at the Centennial. Some are on view in this room. They were once exhibited in the gallery William Walters opened behind his home at 5 West Mt Vernon Place in 1884. A display table and a chair in Oriental style made for the 1884 gallery are now in this room. The Japanese study was used as a dining room by both the Thomas (1850-92) and the Jencks (1892-1953) families. The kitchen was in the basement, and food was placed in a dumbwaiter and sent upstairs. Except for the Thomases' English Gothic-revival sideboard, which stands today in its original dining room has long disappeared. In the 1890s, the Jencks family removed the Gothic-style plasterwork and gave the room a French Renaissance character, installing an old chimney piece, a bay window, and different ceiling beams.
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