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i have a 14.5" high wooden man with small child holding peach and riding a dog, he has several bats and a lotas leaf on his back. all the figures have bone/ivory eyes and teeth.
it has a separete base with a peg.
i can't find any name or marking on the base or figures. i can't figure out if its japanese, chinese or the age any info. would be helpfull.

From its posture and attributes, this Chinese figural group probably depicts Li Tieguai, one of the Daoist 'Eight Immortals' and an acolyte. Li's earthly manifestation is in the form of a crippled beggar. The cracking is typical of such wood carvings, which were a traditional craft in Mainland China as well as Taiwan and Hong Kong, but tended to dry out, split and shed the applied details when sold to tourists with air conditioned homes. I'd guesstimate that it dates to around the mid-20th century or later, based on how much of the bone or ivory survives. The online Wikipedia has a page about the Immortals if you're interested in further information.
Best regards,
Bill H.

Hi, I received your email and am providing the requested further comments here for the sake of general interest. This wood carving ranks high in quality among those I've seen, though the cracking detracts from it, and I would not worry about insuring it. These items were popular during the Vietnam war, resulting in large numbers of them accumulating through purchases and gift-giving by personnel from the USA and other countries associated with that conflict. Many original owners have begun to achieve an age where they're starting to drift off "to that big ol' PX (military post exchange) in the sky", so there are a lot of these carvings turning up in garage and estate sales these days. They come in all sizes, often configured as candle holders or made into lamps.

You indicate that you had problems with a "link" though I didn't provide one before. If you encountered difficulties trying to crank up wikipedia.com, it may be you found a copycat site or your PC issued an error message because it lacks a basis for converting the Chinese characters that are interspersed in the English text. Anyway, here's the link to the page I mentioned on the Immortals along with snapshots of all of them for your scrapbook (from a vase with mark shown).

Cheers,

Bill H.



URL Title :WikImmortals

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