Rectangular incense container (kogo) with woman fulling silk

The top of the lid on this tiny container depicts a woman beating silk fabric with a wooden mallet called a fulling block. Fulling was a commonplace practice in Japan and other parts of East Asia before irons became widely used. After washing garments or bolts of cloth, textiles would be neatly folded and beaten until their wrinkles were removed and their surfaces smoothed.

The thudding of the fulling block was a sound associated in Japan with autumn. Fulling was often women's work, and the repetitive sound of the block beating in the night connoted loneliness and romantic yearning for an absent lover. The interior of this box's lid continues the fall theme with a scene of the moon and autumn grasses.

An incense container like this one might have been displayed in a tearoom. So subtly executed that its design seems to vanish at certain viewing angles, it exemplifies the extraordinary technical skill and understated taste of its maker, Shibata Zeshin.