Netsuke: Hare with Amber Eyes, Edo Period – Porcelain Art Mug

A hare carved in ivory, small enough to close a hand around. Netsuke are Japanese toggles, used to secure a medicine box or a tobacco pouch to the sash of a kimono — functional objects that became vehicles for extraordinary artistry. The hare was a common subject: a creature associated in Japanese folklore with the moon, longevity and good fortune. This one is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Netsuke were made from the seventeenth century onwards by specialist craftsmen, depicting animals, mythological figures, scenes from daily life and objects of all kinds, often with a wit and observation that belies their scale. The collection of 264 netsuke described in Edmund de Waal's memoir The Hare with Amber Eyes (2010) followed the dispersal and reassembly of a family collection through five generations across Paris, Vienna and Tokyo — the netsuke surviving wars, displacement and loss as the larger world around them shifted beyond recognition. De Waal inherited the collection from his great-uncle Iggie, and the book that resulted is both a history of objects and a meditation on what it means for beautiful things to persist.

Fine porcelain, 10 oz — 104 mm high, 75 mm across the base. The image runs around the body; handle and rim stay white. Dishwasher and microwave safe.

Netsuke of a Rabbit, Japan, Edo or Meiji period, 19th century. Ivory. Gift of Mrs. Russell Sage, 1910. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, acc. no. 10.211.10. Open Access, public domain.

Selected by Dr. Walther Fuchs for the Tazzarte collection.