明 黑漆剔犀毫筆

elegantly shaped, the slender and undulating handle tapering slightly in the middle and near the two ends, collared near the brush end with a ring, finely carved through the thick black and red layers with heart-shaped guri pommels, the ring carved with scrolls, set opposite a rounded knob at the end of the brush handle, the cap of tapered cone shape similarly decorated, terminating in a round tip

The present brush exhibits many of the characteristics seen on early guri pieces, such as the style of carving seen on a fan handle from the tomb of Chou Yu, dated to 1249, excavated at Maoshan, Jintan county in Jiangsu province, illustrated by Regina Krahl and Brian Morgan, From Innovation to Conformity, Bluett and Sons Ltd., London, 1989, p. 89, fig. 1249; and another handle from the shipwreck sunk off Sinan, Korea, in 1323, published in Relics Savaged from the Seabed off Sinan: Materials III, Seoul, 1985, pl. 357.

For a closely related black guri lacquer brush of similar form and design, see Chugoku Bijutsu no Iki: Bunbo Seika [Essence of Chinese art: Treasures in the Scholar's Studios], Tokyo, 2007, p. 14, cat. no. 6.  Compare also two cinnabar-red lacquer brushes included in the exhibition Karamono. Imported Lacquerwork - Chinese, Korean and Ryukyuan (Okinawa), Tokugawa Art Museum, Tokyo, 1997, cat. nos. 14 and 16, both attributed to the Ming dynasty, and an additional example sold at Christie's Hong Kong, 26th April 2004, lot 1112.