IKKYU
A wood netsuke of two octopi, one trapped inside and the other clinging to the outside of a barnacle-encrusted bell, their bulging eyes double inlaid, using ivory with black horn pupils. It appears that a rescue operation is under way, with the free octopus bracing itself using most available tentacles in an attempt to help its entrapped partner, whose protuberant “beak” lends it a particularly mulish expression.

Signed: Ikkyu, engraved within an oval-rectangular reserve.

Circa 1870
Length: 2 1/16 in., 5.25 cm.

Ex collections: F.P. Schneider, Los Angeles, no. 311; Virginia and Ray Atchley, Los Angeles

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