A VERY RARE GOLD LACQUER TABLE-FORM ORNAMENT DEPICTING... Lot n° 16

A VERY RARE GOLD LACQUER TABLE-FORM ORNAMENT DEPICTING MINOGAME Japan, 19th century Of square form with indented corners, supported on four elegantly curved gold-lacquered cabriole legs. Exquisitely decorated in gold, silver, and black takamaki-e and hiramaki-e to depict a minogame standing foursquare in the center with four smaller minogame of varying sizes clambering on top of it and each other, their bushy seaweed-tails superbly executed with countless gold lacquered ‘threads’ covering the entire tabletop over the silver and gold lacquered waves and clouds detailed with e-nashiji. The underside of nashiji. SIZE 8.8 x 19.1 x 19.1 cm Condition: Good condition with minor wear, expected age cracks to lacquer, little rubbing to lacquer. Provenance: The Strong National Museum of Play, accession number 76.3310 (lacquered to the underside). Margaret Woodbury Strong (1897-1969) grew up in a prosperous family of collectors. Her interests ranged so widely that by 1960 she had amassed more than 27,000 collectible items and works of art. The vast majority of her collections related in some way to play and as her accumulation grew, Margaret planned a museum to house her collection. It eventually opened to the public in 1982, and grew dramatically over the following decades, expanding its collections, facilities, and resources, now spanning over 285,000 square feet. Today, the Strong National Museum of Play (known as just The Strong Museum or simply The Strong) is the only collections-based museum in the world devoted solely to the study of play.