Two very large bronze lanterns. Edo period
The hexagonal base with six panels filled with shishis in relief is surmounted by a moulded shaft encircled by a dragon which supports a lotus and a base with socket for a light bulb, the hexagonal lantern proper with six panels with scrolls in openwork and a sliding door, the panels backed by parchment, surmounted by a roof with up-turned eaves and a winding dragon on top. Long inscription to the roof containing the temple name Higashiyama Sennyūritsuji, the era name Kanbun (1661-1673) and the date of Teihō 8 (1689). Black patina.
Height 152 cm
Lanterns were placed in front of the burial chapels and mausoleums of the shoguns and their immediate family or in Buddhist temples.
Bronze lanterns preserved on site today show a clear structural scheme of various elements: base zone with shishi decoration, shaft bordered by petal borders, base plate with dragon decoration supporting the body, and a curved roof crowned by a flaming jewel. Shishi and dragon recur in the iconographic program. The scheme is retained for 200 years, but in later times it is enriched by a dragon coiling around the shaft and, on the roof, by dragon heads with attached bells.
With the collapse of the shogunate and the dissolution of the Buddhist temples at the beginning of the Meiji period, the fate of the bronze lanterns was sealed. They were sold, melted down or repeatedly destroyed by war or earthquakes. Foreigners or travellers residing in Japan at the time acquired them to place in their gardens at home.
Interior of the shop of Walter Fritzsche on Fasanenstrasse 22, 1950s
Provenance
Ernst Fritzsche Japan- u. Chinakunst, Berlin