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ANDŌ COMPANY, NAGOYA

Lidded casket and stand in the form of a sutra box

1922

Enamel, gilt bronze, copper, gold wire, silk | 13.9 × 37.1 × 15.6 cm (whole object) (whole object) | RCIN 42593

This casket mimics the shape of an eighth-century Buddhist sutra box for religious texts. However, the lid is decorated with the British royal coat of arms in colourful enamel, using a painstaking layering technique called moriage. A scroll within celebrates the Prince of Wales’s arrival in Tokyo at cherry blossom season, ‘when all nature joins in the national joy’.

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