A Nanban helmet in the form of European hat

Momoyama - early Edo period (16th - 17th century)

Details

A Nanban helmet in the form of European hat
Momoyama - early Edo period (16th - 17th century)
The helmet of koshozan (raised at the rear) style composed of six lightly gilt iron plates with suji (ridges) made in the form of a European hat with a separately-joined horizontal brim raised at the front, the six plates forming the bowl with further russet iron plates each applied riveted pierced and roundly carved with Fujin (the wind deity) with his bag of wind, Raijin (the thunder deity) with his ring of drums, the immortal Tekkai Sennin shown transporting his miniature self along his expelled breath beneath a pine, another immortal with cloak of leaves carrying a basket containing blossoms and a scroll and playing a shakuhachi (vertical bamboo flute) beneath bamboo, a peafowl, and an onagadori (long-tailed bird) standing on rocks with a paulownia blossom, with details in gold and silver inlay, the upper surface of the brim with a riveted iron plate carved with dragons among clouds, fitted with a five-tiered black-lacquered iron plate itazane shikoro (neck guard) with blue silk braid sugake-odoshi (loose lacing)
With lacquered wood box

Provenance

Wakisaka Family, Tatsuno Province (Hyogo Prefecture)
Minatogawa Shrine, Hyogo Prefecture, donated by above as offering
Private collection, Japan in the 1940s

Lot Essay

An almost identical helmet, with pierced plates illustrating the same immortal playing a shakuhachi, and other plates with similar landscapes with flora, including one with a tiger among peonies, with gilt tiple hollyhock crest on the fukigaeshi of the shikoro, and formerly a treasure of the Matsudaira House of Echizen, see Matsumura Tomoya, Beauty of Armor, exh. cat. (Fukui: Fukui City History Museum, 2013), no. 25. The two helmets are unmistakenly made by the same hand, and both are of superlative quality metal sculpture. From the powerful Matsudaira clan of Mikawa arose Motoyasu, who was to become the Shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu. Yuki Hideyasu, the son of Ieyasu, became lord of the Echizen house, and not unreasonable to consider a connection between the daimyo and both helmets.
A further iron hat-shaped Nanban helmet of similar form and construction with simpler design of gilt plates of stylized dragons is in the Barbier- Mueller Collection, Art of Armour - Samurai Armor from the Ann and Gabriel Barbier - Mueller Collection, published in association with Yale Press in 2012, pl. 5. And an iron helmet of similar hat-shape with a circular brim given by Tokugawa Ieyasu to Kato Yoshiaki (1563 - 1631) now in the Osaka castle museum collection and recorded as a Nanban helmet by the Kato family is Illustrated number 35, The Art of the Samurai, Metropolitan Museum of Art 2009, edited Ogawa Morihiro.

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