Following up on my previous post featuring an item of ivory erotica from Japan, I thought I would post this meditative female nude. Also of ivory, she is much more contemporary and, while nicely carved, does not match the quality and skill of the earlier item. Just 2 inches tall, the ivory Schreger lines are clearly visible along her smooth curves. Although she resembles a Japanese netsuke, my suspicion is that she was actually carved in China and created for the European tourist trade like the so-called doctor's dolls. In 1988, I went on a tour sponsored by the American Bar Association of China and Hong Kong and there I saw shop windows crammed with innumerable ivory netsuke and similar carvings, often of a naughty nature. The netsuke were a unique Japanese solution to the problem that Japanese kimonos lacked pockets. Japanese men would carry personal items in punches or boxes suspended on a cord strung through the obi (sash) and the netsuke was strung on one end of the cord to keep the cord from slipping out. When China opened to tourism following President Richard Nixon's visit in 1972, Chinese entrepreneurs quickly learned that Western tourists were a ready market for netsukes, especially erotic ones, and were not too picky about authenticity or even quality, and soon Chinese craftsman began churning out "Japanese" netsukes in ivory, wood, and resin, often with bogus signatures. Some, like this creation, were nicely done, but many were hacked out on lathes and roughly detailed with modern drills. I have in fact seen variations of this same model in ivory, wood, bone, and resin, often far more crudely carved. The demand for ivory resulted in the extensive poaching of African elephants, threatening the wild population. The 1989 Convention of International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) ban on the ivory choked off, but did not completely end, the contemporary trade in commercial ivory.
