Ivory and the Aesthetics of Modernity in Meiji Japan [Hardcover]

The opening of the ports of Japan in 1859 brought a flood of Japanese craft products to the world marketplace. For ivory it was a golden age. This book examines the role that ivory and ivory carvers played in the expression of nationalism and the development of sculpture in the later nineteenth and early twentieth century.Preface 1. Art, Ivory and the Meiji Period: An Introduction 2. The Curiosity Shop: The Forces of Capitalism 3. Transformations of the Craftsman 4. Individualism, Orthodoxy and the Evolution of Ivory Carving as Sculpture 5. Ivory after Meiji: A Conclusion

Martha Chaiklin is a scholar of Japan, the East India Companies and material culture. She is the author of Cultural Commerce and Dutch Commercial Culture: The Influence of European Material Culture on Japan (2003), translator and annotator of A Pioneer in Yokohama (2012) and numerous shorter works.