FINE SILVER BOX
MEIJI PERIOD
£650
Auction: 13 March 2019 at 10:00 GMT
Description
finely engraved with flowering and fruiting stalks and leafy foliage, the design extending from the top on to the sides of the box, the interior lined with lacquered wood, marked 'jungin' (sterling silver) to the base; together with THREE SMALL SILVER VASES, each marked 'jungin' (4)
Dimensions
widest 19cm
Footnote
Provenance:
From the Collection of Richard Noel Postlethwaite (1883-1950).
Richard Noel Postlethwaite was born in Halifax, Yorkshire. After graduating from Clare College, Cambridge, with a Mathematics Tripos degree, he moved to Yokohama in Japan to work for the Rising Sun Petroleum Company (known today as Shell), where he was an Accountant and Director until 1922.
When living in Yamate (known in English as The Bluff), the foreigner's settlement in Yokohama, Postlethwaite met and married Ella Adeline Vincent Cain. Many of the silver pieces included in this sale would have been acquired, or were gifted to the couple for their wedding.
Postlethwaite was colleague and friend of Hugh Malcolm (1886-1961), then Managing Director of the Rising Sun Petroleum Company. Lyon & Turnbull successfully sold Malcolm's collection of Japanese Works of Art in 2016.
Postlethwaite returned to England just before the Tokyo-Yokohama earthquake of 1923, and brought back his extensive collection of Japanese silver, bronze and ceramics. The second part of the collection will be offered at Lyon & Turnbull's Edinburgh Asian sale in March 2019.