Early Carved Wooden Dolls Known as "Noh-Ningyo", 18th Century, Provenance

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15" (38 cm.) standing. 12" seated. Each of carved wood with large rounded face in the gosho style, and each with fine lustrous gofin finish, textile upper arms, each with different expression on the carved and painted face and variation of hair style on the human hair wig, highly-defined eye sockets, and defined ears. Each is wearing superb original costume comprising unusual checkered silk brocade trousers with melon crest design, green silk brocade coats (kariginu) patterned with butterflies and peonies and having tie strings at the wrists, and lacquered eboshi-style court caps; the standing doll holds a fan. The trio represent figures from an unidentified Noh drama. Their original box is included. Excellent condition overall, albeit minor restoration on left hand figure. Edo period, late 1700s. This iconic trio is arguably one of the most noted and written-of sets in Japanese doll history, once in the collection of Nishizawa Tekiho, who was curator of the Imperial Household Museum (forerunner of the Tokyo National Museum) and considered the most influential and knowledgeable Japanese doll collector of his day, Documents in the Nishizawa archives date the dolls to 1781. The dolls are shown and described in Ningyo, the Art of the Japanese Doll on page 47 and Japanese Dolls on page 29, both by Alan Scott Pate, and in earlier publications. Ninhon No Ningyo, 1955, page 37, and Ningyo no Sekkai: Gosho Ningyo, 1986.