Model of the Taitokuin Mausoleum

At the White City Japan-British Exhibition of 1910 there was much lacquer-ware on display. A special attraction was this large, carefully detailed model of the shrine of the Tokugawa Shoguns, the Taitokuin Mausoleum in Edo (Tokyo). Its makers included the finest carpenters, lacquer artists, and sculptors of the day. The model was lent by the city and subsequently presented to George V by the Organising Committee of the exhibition. This astonishing work of art, now painstakingly restored by Japanese craftsmen, has recently been loaned back to Tokyo by HM Queen Elizabeth II and is on public exhibition there, a lasting testament to the original mausoleum, which was destroyed by fire in 1945.