The Rijksmuseum owns an extraordinary photograph album from around 1900, previously owned by Paul and Lucie Sandel. Almost the size of a small suitcase, the large album has lacquer covers on the front and back. The fine gold painting technique on these lacquer covers suggests that they are from Japan. Interestingly, the front cover has an inscription “Sumatra”, one of the largest islands in present-day Indonesia, and the album contains photographs from that region. Though little is known about this album yet, this article explores what the album could tell us about the exchange of lacquer objects between the Netherlands, the Dutch East Indies, and Japan

The large eccentric photograph album at the Rijksmuseum measures almost double the size of ordinary souvenir albums, too big and too heavy to carry with two arms. The black lacquer cover has an inscription in the center “Sumatra”, the letters shaped with a firefly, a moth, and other small bugs. Around the inscription, seven cartouches depict multiple scenes. Within a shape of a snowflake at the top, a man in an aristocratic dress holds a plum branch, and a plum shape on the bottom right shows a couple of quails by fall leaves. The generous use of gold and inlays makes the lacquer cover a luxurious surface with various tactile motifs. According to the museum records, the original owners of this album are Paul and Lucie Sandel, a German couple who owned a tobacco plantation in Sumatra in the final decades of the nineteenth century. This album of Paul and Lucie Sandel (“the Sandel’s album” from here on) seems to belong to a popular type of Japanese photograph albums made as souvenirs for foreigners in Japan from the 1870’s to the 1900’s.

Japanese souvenir albums

In the early seventeenth century, Japan posed an international trade restriction to limit political and religious influence from abroad. The Dutch were the only Europeans allowed to have commercial relationships with Japan. This situation lasted until the mid-nineteenth century when, after more than 200 years, Japan was pressured to lift this restriction and started welcoming foreign merchants, diplomats, and scholars in selected port cities like Yokohama. Many foreign travelers bought Japanese toys and crafts as souvenirs to bring home. Photograph albums were particularly popular in this context, as they documented the places and everyday scenes that the travelers encountered in Japan. These souvenir albums were bound in lacquer covers with generous use of gold and inlaid ivory and shell pieces. Each page has one large photograph, and the pictures are hand-coloured to give vibrant detail. This type of lacquer-covered souvenir albums that carried the memories of the foreign travelers are found in museums and libraries around the world today.

The Rijksmuseum owns a typical example of the Japanese souvenir album, such as this piece. The cover of this album depicts two women arranging flowers for the room against the red background. Carved ivory pieces shape the women’s faces and hands. Some details like the women’s dresses are raised and the stone lantern in the background is textured, making a tactile surface. The technique of combining lacquer painting and carved inlays is unique to Japan, highlighting the Japanese origin of the covers. Inside, coloured photographs show famous and characteristic places in Japan like the shrine complex in Nikkō and street scenes with women in kimono. The lacquer covers were an important part of the album because lacquer objects represented Japanese craftsmanship as a popular export product in Europe since the sixteenth century. So, the lacquer-covered album represented Japan in multiple layers, through the application of the traditional lacquer technique as well as with the photographic images of Japanese views.

The journey of the Sandel’s album

The lacquer covers and the dating of the Sandel’s album suggest that it might belong to this type of Japanese souvenir albums. However, the size of the Sandel’s album is more than twice as large as ordinary souvenir albums. It also does not contain any photographs from Japan. While the lacquer covers often signified the Japanese origin of the souvenir albums as evidence for the owner’s visit to Japan, the lacquer covers seem merely to be a decoration on the Sandel’s album. Considering the long history of lacquer trades between the Netherlands, the Dutch East Indies, and Japan since the seventeenth century, Japanese lacquer objects must have been common in the lives of Sumatran residents. The Sandels in Sumatra likely had a way to acquire the Japanese lacquer covers through the Dutch trader’s connection to Japanese lacquer makers.

The Sandel’s album reveals an important insight into the lacquer trade between Japan and the Dutch. Many Japanese lacquer objects in the museums around Europe have accounted for the popularity of Japanese lacquer in Europe, and many scholars in and outside of Japan have studied the export lacquer objects. However, these studies rarely discuss the position of the Dutch East Indies in this exchange. This album attests to the important roles the Dutch East Indies continued to play in the Dutch-Japanese trades, with the authority to independently commission lacquer products from Japan. Moreover, the Sandel’s album from around 1900 shows that this relationship remained after Japan had started international trades with other countries.

The long history of international trade makes Dutch collections of Japanese art offer insights into the complexity of the global circulation of lacquer objects. Researching the Sandel’s album at the Rijksmuseum can help us better understand the production and circulation of Japanese lacquer objects. It would also reveal how the commercial relationship between these two countries – the Netherlands and Japan - changed through this transformative period in the mid-nineteenth century. Relating these Japanese souvenir albums to previous forms of export products from Japan, this research will continue to explore modern Japanese art history in the global context.

About the author

Naoko Adachi is a Dr. Anton C.R. Dreesmann Fellow and a PhD candidate at the University of Pennsylvania. Adachi studies the international exchange of objects and ideas in Meiji-period Japan, focusing on Japanese souvenir photograph albums made for foreign travelers from the 1860s to the 1900s.

More information on the research

Citation

To cite this article please use the following citation: Adachi, Naoko. Japanese lacquer: The journey of Japanese lacquer on a photograph album. Published 2/06/2021. Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, Stories: Connecting Objects, [URL], last visited: [MM/DD/YY].

Further reading

Boom, Mattie. "Fotografie in De Sumatra-albums Van Paul Sandel." Bulletin Van Het Rijksmuseum 53, no. 3 (2005): 243-69. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40383389.

Wakita, Mio., and Kinbē Kusakabe. Staging Desires: Japanese Femininity in Kusakabe Kimbei's Nineteenth-Century Souvenir Photography. Berlin: Reimer, 2013.