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An astounding carved wooden elephant heavily decorated with gold and inlays bearing the seal of Ogawa Haritsu dating from the mid Edo period. Into the creatures back has been carved a deep well for lined with silver rimmed copper to be filled with ash as an incense burner or Shuro censer. Over the well a broad bronze cover pierced with wild chrysanthemum protects and conceals the ash pit. The sculpture is 33 x 64 x 24 cm (13 x 25 x 9-1/2 inches). There is single missing jewel on the right hip.
Ogawa Haritsu (1663-1747), also known as Ritsuo, one of the great individualists in the history of lacquer, was a poet as well as a painter, potter and lacquerer. Born into the samurai class, he renounced arms for the brush.In the 1680s, he became a disciple of the haiku poet Matsuo Basho (1644-1694). Haritsu turned to lacquer after 1707, the year his friends Hattori Ransetsu and Takarai Kikaku, both disciples of Basho, died. He adopted the art name Ritsuo, or "Old man in a torn bamboo hat," in 1712. The name suggests a poet or artist wandering carefree. A revival of interest in Haritsu's style and techniques during the 19th century is best exemplified in the copies of his work by Shibata Zeshin (1807-1891), the foremost Japanese lacquerer of the 19th century.
