Box for Inkstone and Writing Implements (Suzuribako)

Box for Inkstone and Writing Implements (Suzuribako)

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

With its wooden arched bridge, weirs of rocks in bamboo baskets and riverside willow, this landscape suggests the Bridge at Uji south of Kyoto, a place famed as a site of tragic romance in the Tale of Genji. Here, the novel motif of fireflies in black lacquer with highlights of iridescent shell adds a temporal note of summer evening to the scene.

Asian Art

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Box for Inkstone and Writing Implements (Suzuribako)Box for Inkstone and Writing Implements (Suzuribako)Box for Inkstone and Writing Implements (Suzuribako)Box for Inkstone and Writing Implements (Suzuribako)Box for Inkstone and Writing Implements (Suzuribako)

The Met's collection of Asian art—more than 35,000 objects, ranging in date from the third millennium B.C. to the twenty-first century—is one of the largest and most comprehensive in the world. Each of the many civilizations of Asia is represented by outstanding works, providing an unrivaled experience of the artistic traditions of nearly half the world.