Asian Arts | Associations | Articles | Exhibitions | Galleries | Message Board | Departments

I have a bronze elephant being attacked by two tigers (tigers have glass eyes) on a heavy wooden base that I inherited from my grandparents. The bronze is 12"h x 11"w x20"l. I was hoping someone could help me and identify the markings on the bottom.
The rectangular one is on the elephant's stomach. The round one is on his left rear foot.

Joel,

The signature reads "Mitsumoto saku" (a work by Mitsumoto).

Mitsumoto was a Meiji period (late 19th-early 20th C.) metalworker who specialized in bronze statues of wild animals (an "animalier"), probably designed and made for the export market in the West.

Guy.

Thanks Guy.
Am I correct in assuming the signature is the rectangular stamp? Any idea what the round stamp reads?

Joel

Joel,

Yes it is the rectangular seal. I Have difficulties with reading the first kanji (at the right) in the round seal - a possible reading of that seal could be "Zensha" but I'm not at all sure. I presume that this second seal is on the wooden base. It could be a seal refering to the individual craftsman of the piece. The name "Mitsumoto" stands for a workshop or studio where these ornaments were made in series for the export market.
BTW it should be interesting to post for us an image of the whole piece.

Guy.

As hard as I could try I couldn't get a clearer photo of this very small round stamp on the elephant's left rear foot. This thing is about 5/32 in diameter. I have included a sketch as best as I could make it using a magnifying glass.

At your request I have also included a collage of pictures of my Elephant & Tigers

Thanks for all your help.

Guy,
I read somewhere that sometimes things in the Meiji period were marked with a "date" stamp of year and month (although the reference was for prints). From what I could see it looked like part of the second character was "getsu" or "gatsu" - at least that is what it looked like to my untrained eye and just comparing it to what I can find on the web.

It is clearly a stamp of some sort applied to the bronze after it was completed as evidenced by the "bounce" rings around the outer circle caused when hitting a metal die against a metal piece possibly tapping it lightly to set position then hitting it hard to set the impression. If the die is moved slightly between the two hits you could expect to see the outer ring from the first tap.

Using an online machine translation program maintained by Jim Breen of the Australian Monash University, I also came up with Mitsumoto for the name in the rectangular cartouche.

I determined that the kanji in the round cartouche could be one or two characters. The element on the left has the root meaning of Cart, which stands alone as the following surnames: Kuruma, Sha, Cha, Kurumazaki and Shiya or Chiya (a given name).

The element on the right is the surname Yu in Chinese. In Japanese it also is used for the surnames Yu and Yutsu, as well as Satoshi, a male given name.

Treating these elements as separate characters and using right-to-left order, I ran the two from the round cartouche through the same translation program and got back the Japanese given name "Oobako."

As a single character, the kanji in the round cartouche can be transcribed as Yu, Shu, Okuru or Itasu, with a root meaning of transport. It seems to be used exclusively in compounds in Japanese.

The character (if that's what it is supposed to be) on the right in the round cartouche consists of the walking "Man" radical on top, a "One" beneath it, then on the bottom, a "Moon" at the left and "knife" at the right. A variant of the character uses a "Knife" that is bent like two arrowheads. The kanji pronunciations vary, depending on which variant is used, but my browser won't let me upload characters to illustrate the matter.

I hope someone else can make sense of all this, because my expertise ends at operating the online machine translator.

Cheers,

Bill H.

Bill,
Thank you so much for pointing out Jim Breen's online machine translation program, and the multi-radical kanji search page it leads to (http://kanji.sljfaq.org/mr.html). In looking at all the various definitions I think that the most logical explanation of what my stamp represents is a export license /control stamp.

Unless someone has a better definition, I thank you all for your help.

Bill is correct. The kanji in the round seal should be read as one character "yu", "shu" "okuru" or "iatsu" (send, transport) and indicates that the object was intended for export (yuhutsu).
Interesting new fact.

BTW: this 'okimono' is a beautiful high quality piece of Meiji craftmanship.

Guy.

Hello, I have a similar Meiji bronze. This one has only a red rectangular stamp and does not include an export stamp.
The rectangular stamp also differs from the photos I have seen online in that it seems to be part of the cast and not a stamp.
Any help would be appreciated.
Regards,
Jason

Jason, From my experience above to get any help you need to take pictures of the stamp and post them on this forum. It needs to be as large and as clear as you can get it. Otherwise they really can't help. While you are at it you might as well take overall pictures of your piece - eventually they experts will want to see it.

Joel Johnstone

Joel,
I did post a photo of it as a response to my initial post. somehow it never showed up. i made another post including a small photo and a photo of the kanji. i borrowed the kanji photo from a post on the forum as it is exactly the same as mine. please see my postings.
thank you for your reply.
regards,
Jason

Asianart.com | Associations | Articles | Exhibitions | Galleries | Message Board | Departments