Important Cultural PropertyLacquered leather box

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  • 1 piece
  • Leather, lacquered
  • Lid: L45.0 W36.2 H8.5 Box: L43.5 W34.7 H9.0
  • Nara period/8th century
  • Tokyo National Museum
  • N-302

The base material of this box is the skins of animals including cow, deer and wild boar. Those skins were tanned first, then fixed on a wooden mould and stretched hard. The surfaces are finished with black or transparent lacquer. There are a total of seven lacquered leather boxes (shippibako) in The Hōryūji Treasures, three of which are decorated with pictures in gold and silver with the motif of auspicious flowers, butterflies and birds (zuikachōchō) or that of flower-plants (sōka).
The manufacturing method of shippibako was imported from the Tang dynasty and many boxes of this type were made throughout the Nara period. However, it appears that they were gradually replaced by wood-based boxes, presumably because shippibako tend to lose their shapes easily. Today, those in The Shōsōin treasures and in The Hōryūji Treasures are the only sizable collections of shippibako. They are indispensable materials for researching the history of lacquerware in Japan.

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