8 Antique Japanese Hina Ningyo Dolls Meiji Era 1900

EIGHT ANTIQUE JAPANESE NINGYŌ — ACQUIRED IN JAPAN, NEAR NARITA A group of eight antique Japanese costume dolls, purchased in person from a small antique shop near Narita, Japan. The shop is run by an elderly Japanese gentleman who has been collecting and dealing in these dolls for fifty years. He dated this group at approximately 120 years old — placing them in the late Meiji period, around 1900 — and was clear with me that these are original period dolls, not the modern reproductions that make up most of what is sold as "antique Japanese dolls" today. I bought them from him directly and I hold the receipts for the purchase. WHAT DISTINGUISHES THESE FROM A REPRODUCTION Gofun heads and hands. The white of the faces is not paint. It is gofun — powdered shellfish shell, traditionally oyster, bound with nikawa, a gelatin rendered from animal or fish. It is built up in many thin coats and burnished between them. It has a soft depth and a faint warmth that moulded plastic and modern slip-cast porcelain do not have, and it ages by fine crazing rather than by chipping like a glaze.Set human hair. The hair is real and was set into the scalp by hand, not a moulded or glued-on wig.Hand-sewn silk. The garments are constructed as miniature kimono — cut, layered and stitched by the same methods used for full-size dress — rather than glued around a form. Several show woven brocade with metallic thread.Recycled washi under the silk. On one figure the outer silk has worn through to reveal the layer beneath: Japanese paper carrying hand-brushed characters. Using recycled paper as padding and lining is a documented feature of Japanese doll construction of this period. It is not something a reproduction has any reason to include. Age that reads as age. Chemically-dyed silks that have faded unevenly, brocade shattering along the fold lines, losses to a cotton robe from insect damage, hands and feet broken at the joints. This is a century of storage, and it is not a finish that can be applied. HOW A DOLL LIKE THIS WAS MADE By the Meiji era, Japanese doll making in the established production centres had been divided among separate specialist trades, and a single small figure could pass through a hundred or more distinct processes before it was finished. The head maker carved the head from tōso, a composition of paulownia sawdust bound with wheat-starch paste, which had largely replaced solid wood because it does not crack the same way. He then coated it in gofun, applying undercoat, mid-coat and topcoat at different glue strengths and rubbing the surface back with fine abrasive or with horsetail stem between coats. On a good head this is repeated dozens of times. Only then was the face drawn in with very fine brushes — eyes, brows, mouth, the rouge on the cheek. The smallest difference in the angle and weight of a line changes the expression entirely, which is why the head maker's craft was the most respected of the trades. The hair setter worked real human hair into the scalp and dressed it in period style — Heian court coiffures for the women, samurai and townsman styles for the men. The costume maker worked in silk, at the better end in Nishijin brocade woven in Kyoto, reading the cloth to decide which section of the woven pattern should fall where it would be seen, and sewing the garments by kimono construction in miniature. The accessory maker produced the fans, crowns, ceremonial batons, bows and swords in metal and lacquer. Several accessories have been lost from this group over the past century, which is entirely usual for dolls of this age and is noted in the condition report below. A finisher dressed the figure, set the costume straight and balanced the whole. THE TRADITION BEHIND THEM Hinamatsuri, the Doll Festival held on the third of March, is among the oldest continuous customs in Japan — and it began as something quite different from a display of dolls. Its distant root is a Chinese purification rite of the third day of the third mon