Tokyo, circa 1870

Finely carved, the two peaches and Finger Citron or Buddha’s Hand on a twisted branch, stained and with a nice touch, signed.

L. 4.1 cm

Provenance:
Auction, Guffroy, Amiens, 3 July 2004
Private collection, France (Consigned to Max Rutherston ltd.)
 
The artist is little known but Max has previously handled a stylish dark mango with a turtle amongst leaves, evidently from the circle of carvers associated with Kokusai. Paul Moss illustrates a stag antler crab by him in his magnum opus on the School, voll. III, no. 554, noting its similarity to another by Hoshunsai Masayuki. What he does not do there is to follow up on other recorded works which consist of a zoomorphic ewer (Hull Grundy bequest to the British Museum, Harris, no. 543) and a frog in curled lotus leaf (Lazernick, NIA, p. 324), both also close to Masayuki. This leaves one to surprise that Buzan may be another art name for Masayuki; if not he must have been a talented apprentice.