A fudekake, or brush rest is a pretty self explanatory piece of apparatus, elevating brushes from the surface of a table. A necessity for a calligrapher, like a netsuke is for the smoker on the move. Japanese ingenuity destined these two objects of utility to be merged. Dual purpose netsuke on the whole are not particularly rare, however, fudekake-netsuke within the dual purpose category are pretty scarce. Some figure - netsuke, the 'lazy' type, ie. Examples that lay down are more than likely fudekake or even kiserukake and one could imagine how a merchant, travelling throughout a city, equipped with a sagemono ensemble, with a yatate (portable brush case) would utilise these fudekake when they eventually arrived at a meeting, after settling down to the formalities, they would remove their sagemono from the belt, ready their brush or kiseru on the netsuke. No doubt, the love the Japanese have for ceremony would engineer a stylish manner to go about all this. It probably was quite a performance.
Our dragon, over three inches in width demonstrates at least two points within the contours of the dragons body where it could act as a rest for something tubular. The details are bold, naive one might say in make-up, though the piece exhibits a power, in keeping with a date of manufacture, I would think in the last years of the 18th Century. Having strung the piece to both Inro, tonkotsu and yatate, I would think originally it would have been paired with the latter two pieces of apparatus and like so many other Netsuke, the piece has a synergy with dark tonkotsu in particular. It becomes enlivened when strung.
Ex: Jury Kolodtschko Collection.
W: 9.2cm x D: 3.4cm x H: 2.3cm
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