Jewellery Cabinet with Paired-Dove Design by Seitaro IMAI

A rectangular lacquer jewellery cabinet worked in the koka ryokuyo technique, the black lacquer exterior carved through layered colour lacquers to reveal an interlaced pattern of irregular, stylised fruit-form cartouches outlined in gold, filled alternately with finely speckled gold and silver nashiji-effect grounds, passages of deep red, and touches of blue. The top is decorated with a pair of black doves facing one another among branches of autumn maple, the leaves rendered in vivid red against the gold-speckled ground. The front fitted with a small hinged door opening to reveal five graduated interior drawers, each with a pale wood (kiri) front and a small metal knob. Accompanied by the original tomobako, the lid inscribed in ink Sokyu Bunshoku Kodansu (Small Cabinet with Paired-Dove Patterned Decoration), the interior of the lid signed Seitaro-saku (made by Seitaro) with an accompanying red seal reading Imai.

IMAI Seitaro
IMAI Seitaro was a Japanese lacquer artist active during the mid-twentieth century, known for his work in choshitsu (carved lacquer), the technique of building up layered lacquer and carving through it to reveal the design beneath. He worked within the same broad tradition as the Kagawa lacquer masters Otomaru Kodo and Isoi Joshin, both later recognised as Living National Treasures, though no direct link between Imai and either artist has been established.
He first appears in the exhibition record in 1948, when a tsuishu box decorated with an autumn maple leaf design was accepted (nyusen) at the fourth postwar Nitten (Japan Art Exhibition), the country's most prestigious juried exhibition. He continued to exhibit at the Nitten through the 1950s, with works accepted in 1951, 1952, and 1954, the latter a tsuishu drum-shaped box decorated with hibiscus, which received the Asakura Prize. He also exhibited with the Shitsugei Doten-kai (a joint exhibition of lacquer artists), where a tsuishu box with camellia design received a chairman's selection award in 1952.
In 1957, a tsuishu box decorated with a lily design, shown at the Nihon Kogei Bijutsuten in commemoration of the restoration of Japanese-Soviet diplomatic relations, was accepted without jurying (mukansa), a status generally reserved for established artists exempted from the standard selection process. In 1958 he was an invited exhibitor (ishoku) at the Kansai exhibition, where two works were purchased, and received a Yomiuri Shimbun attendance prize for a tsuishu box decorated with a grape design.