Passed
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Description
16" (41 cm.) The pair of isho-ningyo depict a pair of actors from a Kyogen drama, each with lively youthful faces of wood covered in gofun with large inset glass eyes and silk fiber hair arranged in differing child styles, portraying a samurai lord and his retainer (frequent foils in Kyogen dramas), the young lord with an open mouth expression, deep dimples and exposed teeth and tongue, white gofun, and sporting a keshibo hairstyle with forelock, two side locks and a "chestnut" top, wearing a rich silk brocade kamishimo wide-shouldered vest and matching trousers combination bearing a repeated design of long-tailed birds and sacred treasures over an under kimono of silk crepe with an unusual silk brocade hem; and the retainer with a slightly darker gofun face and a yakko hairstyle with shaved head and two long side locks, wearing a more modest black silk kimono with a green obi tie belt; both mounted in wood stands and wearing straw sandals. Minor craquelure and wear to textiles. Early Meiji Era, late 19th century. Kyogen was a popular interlude performance art, often performed tangentially with the more austere Noh dramas. Typically comedic and improvisational in nature, they featured stock characters enmeshed in situations that often times subverted social norms, and included ribald humor and body comedy, which delighted the audiences. The two figures here are from an as-yet unidentified early Meiji atelier that specialized in Noh and Kyogen figures, all bearing the same distinctive youthful countenances and child hairstyles.