A
young boy with hair neatly fashioned into two karako style topknots, dressed in
elaborate clothing with laced collar and pants, he is mounting on a banyan leaf
fan looking forward intently. As is common in mythology, it appears the boy is
taking flight on a mission, which is denoted by the butterfly landed on the bottom
of the banyan leaf, and evidently when the netsuke is wore with a cord, which
runs through a well positioned large himotoshi formed between its arms and base.
Sennin
and tennin are popular subjects in Japanese netsuke. Here is a seldom portrayed
Doji (Chinese: Shancai Tongzi), an immortal acolyte of Kannon. The boy is realistically
rendered in boxwood, deeply engraved floral motifs polished to a ultra smooth
surface derived an embossed
effect, which created
a varied reflective shine bouncing off the curvature of the figure. The netsuke
is an excellent example of luminous variation achieved by high hand polishing.
