Japanese Boxes, We Like?

[Bugyotsuji]

Dave, everyone needs one of these!
Just as back in the day, a very useful box for bits. Blade cleaning tools, registration cards etc. 

[Bugyotsuji]

Just sorting through some old katana-bako and decided to take a couple of shots. I realized again that boxes with characters on them attract me. 

Left. Has a date on the bottom and is tied shut with cords through slits in the base.

 

Right. Says 刀箱 katana-bako on the top, and is dated under the lid.

 

Middle. Narrower one covered with oiled paper(?), has a 3-shaku+ (100cm) sliding drawer inside with an iron lockwork drawer face.

 

 

 

 

[Bugyotsuji]

The middle one, no writing apparent.

 

[Viper6924]

5 hours ago, Bugyotsuji said:

I realized again that boxes with characters on them attract me. 

I can’t but agree with you on that 🙂

One thing that often surprises me is how Japanese sellers often ignore to mention characters present on boxes etc. I suspect that many of them can’t translate old-style Japanese. 
To me added characters adds a lot of historical value.

 

Jan

[Bugyotsuji]

I don’t think many of them realize how much non-Japanese people value such seemingly innocent records of age as a brush-written owner’s name and date. Thus dealers will see the writing, but accord no further thought to it, having little meaning within the Japanese context.

[Viper6924]

Quite often they overlook the fact that the artifact comes with a date. On several occations I bought items labeled as 20th century by the seller. You have helped me with countless of these boxes. I’ve got a tabacco bon dated to 1840 and a Bamboo vase from 1811. I’ve bought these items for close to nothing. Something tells me that the seller would have upt his price if he knew that they carried that beautiful label ”Edo period”. Not that I complain 🙂🙂🙂

 

Jan

[waljamada]

Here's a laquered painted box which I'm sure is just a tourist piece that I got at a Goodwill.  It's a catch all box now...

[Spartancrest]

Just stumbled on this thread- great boxes shown.

I bought a falling apart box that may have once contained tea ceremony pieces or vase ? Anyway the joints were giving out and some shelves were broken or lost. I cleaned and tightened the fixings [square wooden pins] and gave it a coat of Danish oil. Also made a wooden locking pin that was missing from the door and fitted some clamps to hold a magnifying glass [which also doubles as a handle for the door]. Useful small item container now.

I was intrigued by the way the wood joinery was done on the door - absolute precision work.

[Bugyotsuji]

Definitely tea ceremony utensils. Nice reworking!

[Spartancrest]

Does a small tansu count as a box? Mine has some paper with script on the back, found it at a local antique show here in Tasmania [long way from it's original home] a few missing straps and one door plate is damaged. It houses my overflow tsuba collection.

 

[kissakai]

Hi Dale

I think most of us would like to find a box like yours. Very nice.

This is mine:

 

 

 

It needs a a bit of a polish but I like the grain as it looks like a pebble that has been thrown into a pool

 

[Bugyotsuji]

Whoah guys, we don’t want to raise the level too high! Lovely stuff… Older wood takes on lustrous tones. For me the nuttier the better.

 

Oh and Dale, tansu, why not? No need to start a separate thread. The more the merrier. 

[Spartancrest]

Grev the grain in the wood and the handles  - superb!

[the metal straps are also better than mine, which I fear are made of old tins!]

Piers, I fear some of the "nuttier" patina on mine might be peanut butter [or at least dried food stains  ]

[kissakai]

Dale. I still like yours

[Bugyotsuji]

Despite the automatic message recommending we start a new thread, I reckon we have enough boxes to keep it going for a while yet! 

 

Recently I sourced a medium/large box that is covered in Kinkarakawa. The dealer kept repeating that it is probably from Muromachi, but if what he says is true, that must mean that the gilded leather is even older. In fairly.... good condition, relatively speaking. 37.5 cm x 24 cm x 11.5 cm high.

Black lacquer inside, with a tasseled broad silk ribbon tie. If you include the top and the bottom, it has 10 facets covered in a variety of Dutch, Spanish, European (?) Cuoi d'oro. Would probably need an expert's eye to see what it is.

 

 

 

[Bugyotsuji]

Straying WAY off the beaten track for a bit here, but I inherited an uchine that needed a box.

 

Everything Japanese needs at least one box to both envelop and display it. The previous owner had made a temporary box from cardboard, which worked very well to protect the uchine, but as a presentation set, looked terrible. Dale's tea ceremony box above would probably have been perfect...

 

In the meantime I visited an antique dealer's warehouse and asked if he had any spare boxes. "Sadly we're down on boxes recently", he said, "but go upstairs and have a look around."

 

With rough measurements in my head I chose something large, to be on the safe side. A dusty wooden box with a removable lid. Nothing fancy. Made with nails, probably less than 100 years old. When I got home, it was obviously too large. It sat around the house for a couple of months until I mentioned it in conversation to someone. "Why don't you cut it down?" he asked. "Huh?" I said, doing a double-take. "Sure, cut it down, that's what I would do!" he added. 

 

Well, yesterday after a particularly stressful day I suddenly decided to do just that. I whipped out a pencil and a ruler, and set to work sawing through it, 9 cm off everything from one end, moving the end sections inwards and nailing them in place with some of the old nails. A hatchet job, but hey, a bit of filing down the jagged bits and a quick application of oak stain and now if you are generous it actually does look the part! 

 

Luckily the original box was not expensive, and the cardboard nesting box now fits perfectly inside it. Job done. 

 

Note. If I find some metalwork ring fixtures at an antiques fair one day, they could add cachet.......... oh, plus a couple of cords. 

 

 

[rematron]

Piers, that’s very wabi sabi of you! Sounds like a very photogenic box. Pictures of your handiwork please! Do we need a ‘show and tell’ thread?

[Bugyotsuji]

Not worth a photo TBH, Jeremy. The image from the description above should be truer to life! 

 

Never been accused of wabisabi before, but I like it. 
 

Afterwards

[rematron]

I really like the look of old used wood. 

[Brian]

Has character, I like it. Well done.

[Bugyotsuji]

Re-configure the interior, and choose a suitable Sanada-himo.

 

 

 

 

[Baka Gaijin]

Nicely done Old Bean

[Bugyotsuji]

This is a bit of a sad story for a private 'things' lockable cabinet. Judging by the 18(?) triple Aoi Mon sprinkled throughout, including in relief on the gilt-copper drawer handles, it must once have been a treasured Tokugawa/Matsudaira possession. To which branch of the family did it belong? Was it kept besides the lord's bed, and what did it contain?

 

It was in a terrible state when it arrived, and I did some basic reversible repair and touch-up. Obviously it still needs a lot of attention and deep pockets, but I have learned much from studying it and imagining its history to the present day. The main problem was the missing key, and the damage to the lock and facia when someone first must have forced their way in.

 

Anyway, in the two years since I've owned it, it was mostly away for diagnosis of the lockwork problem. It's actually quite basic, but extremely fiddly, and the old repairer could not get his fingers to do the job properly. Eventually he gave up, and I brought it home in pieces. One good thing was that he had fashioned a brass key for it, not pretty but functional.

 

Recently I asked a young restorer if he could do anything with the lock internals, handing him the bag of copper and brass bits, and he has finally sorted it for me. It's truly a Frankenstein creation, but it does the job. I've attached a label to the key with instructions on how it works in case anyone tries to have a go and breaks it again!

 

It's been a long wait, but who is complaining?

 

 

[Brian]

Sounds like you need a gunsmith...not a locksmith
Can't imagine a primitive lock would be so complex? Box looks great. Probably a lovely long term project.

[Bugyotsuji]

Brian, the first guy was a locksmith when he was young, and he got into all sorts of trouble with the police, for reasons unspoken. One day he was summoned to the Police Station, scared witless at what they might have discovered, when he was led into the backyard and: "We've locked one of the cars with the keys inside", they said. "Can you open the door?"

 

He later became a maker of shirasaya for swords, and then indeed a gunsmith, doing all of our repairs for us. Unfortunately he's approaching 90 and in very poor health, so he's given out all his workbench tools. Internally the lock is simple, using what looks like a Western key, to squeeze an internal spring in the oriental Kura padlock style. The internal baffle sections of brass and copper had become detached and needed soldering skills which I do not possess.

 

The guy who fixed it for me is our up-and-coming replacement gunsmith, a guy who seems to be able to turn his hand to anything. He works on marine diesel engines as his main job, and is just rebuilding his Kawasaki 1100 Zephyr engine.

[Graybadger]

Just wanted to share a link to a delightful article with in-depth discussion of a chaire tea caddy for Japanese tea ceremony and the elaborate set of boxes for it and the related pieces, and beautiful photos of the boxes.  see https://studiopotter.org/looking-white-dew

 

[Bugyotsuji]

Thank you for that Greg. Boxes, fabrics, pottery, poetry and tea!

 

An immensely scholarly article that has incidentally helped me out with a couple of word usages that had been bothering me.

[Shogun8]

What an amazing, deeply insightful and entertaining article! Thanks so much for sharing!

[Bugyotsuji]

Just filling in here with nothing substantial, but I have a wooden box with a seriously warped lid. The lid is a rectangular flat section of light wood, (paulownia?) with two simple straight guides/braces underneath, which likewise also warped upwards towards the ends.

 

In my innocence, I decided to try and reverse the warp.

WARNING, mental convolutions ahead!

 

The outside surface of the lid must have dried out over the years. My first thought was to oil the upper surface alone and encourage the wood cells to absorb oil and expand in the opposite direction. This I repeated for several weeks, laying it on a flat surface and placing weights on the raised edges of the lid.

 

For over a month I tried every encouragement under the sun, but a warp is a warp is a warp! Eventually I took off the brace/guide strips underneath and by oiling them too, and bending and locking them in opposite tension, tried to reverse their individual warps. Then, in order to use their remaining natural aged warp against the lid's warp I have reversed their orientation, gluing and pegging them back in original place but in opposite tension.

 

In my mind I had first thought optimistically that this task would surely be possible. Over the weeks however, pessimism took over my mind under the dreaded power of the warp, and I realized that I was being foolish. But then gradually I began to see results as the wood submitted grudgingly to the human will, and recently my mind has calmed down as the lid seems to have stabilized close to flat.

 

It's just an ordinary Japanese box with old cords, but at last I begin to have hopes that it will have a useful life ahead of it. Now, what to put in it?!?! 

[Bugyotsuji]

a) Under reverse weighting, and b) results so far. (There were big gaps at the edges originally.) Started this in April.

 

a)

 

b)