eBay

MEASURES:

Height: 23,62 inch; Width: 11,02 inch; Depth: 9,84 inch ; Weight: 18,74 lbs

CONDITIONS:

Perfect, just some signs of aging here and there.

Item description:

Beautiful sculpture in hard-paste porcelain entirely hand-decorated with decorations in light bas-relief, finished in pure gold and glazed with third-fire firing, dating back to around the end of the 19th century, made in Japan by the Satsuma factory, there is a Japanese ideogram in red near the base, I presume the signature of the artist or the factory.

Useful information for the evaluation of the object:

From our research on the internet we found "elephant and palanquin in a pagoda", porcelain by Satsuma sold on 1stDibs for more than 8,000 euros, while for a small sculpture just 13 cm high from the same period, almost 1,000 euros are requested on Etsy and for a sculpture of Guanyin 36 cm high, therefore much lower and much narrower, €3,600 are always requested on Etsy. Finally we found a sculpture from the same period, very similar to ours in subject and decoration, but smaller, 43 centimeters high, sold at the auction on October 28, 2020, by the auction house Zacke, lot 116, at the price of €4045 to which the auction fees of 25-30% must be added. All this to give an idea of the value of porcelains similar to ours, considering that our holy man is nothing short of enormous, 60 cm high and extremely wide, for a total weight of 8.5 kg of porcelain.

Final thoughts on the subject:

Our object belonged to the furnishings of the noble palace in via Cola di Rienzo 15 in Rome, which was sold by the Babbuino auction house in 1976. Our Santone was even placed on the back cover of the auction catalogue and was attributed, by the auction expert, as per the blurb in the photo, to the Japanese manufacture of Satsuma and dated to the 19th century. The artistic quality of the object is very high, note the beauty of the decorations on the robe, all made in strong bas-relief, one by one all by hand by the decorator. The sculpture was finished with such a quantity of pure gold as to make the gilded parts particularly bright.

Information on artist and/or manufacturer:

The origins of Satsuma porcelains most likely date back to the end of the 16th century or the beginning of the 17th century, after the Japanese incursions into Korea, and with the deportation of Korean potters to the Satsuma region. If in the first centuries the use of the above-mentioned porcelains was limited to daily activities, after the Universal Exhibition of 1867 the interest of the vast Western public grew: this pushed the craftsmen to develop mass production aimed at export. But not all allowed the value of the workmanship to go to the detriment of the export market: some artists, such as Taizan Yohei IX, Itō Tōzan, Kinkōzan Sōbei VI, Yabu Meizan, Chin Jukan XII, Miyagawa Kōzan (Makuzu), Seikozan and Ryozan, stood out for their desire to revive the traditional workmanship and decorations. The work of the Satsuma craftsmen continued until the end of the twentieth century. Although the oldest pieces do not have any markings, it is possible to identify the most recent ones, dating from the mid-nineteenth century to the twentieth century, through the different marks applied by each artist, most of the time in Japanese, rarely with letters of the Latin alphabet.

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