This clamshell from a past QBO sale holds a tiny world in your palm. The mini-diorama was Japanese-made between 1930 – 1950 and portrays rural life with a boat on a river, a thatched millhouse, wooden bridge, cypress tree, and a quarter-sized waterwheel that even spins!
Waterwheels are ancient technology of such great utility they quickly spread across the world. The concepts needed came together in the Mediterranean from multiple sources out of Greece, Rome, Byzantium, Ptolemaic Egypt and Mesopotamia during the 2nd-century – 4th century BCE. Forerunner to our turbine-driven hydroelectric power plants, they increased production of flour, oil, paper, lumber, textiles, wire and sheet metal. Some ‘production’ waterwheels still run today. In Japan waterwheels powered mills and provided irrigation to farmland. This late 1800s study taken by Italian photographer Farsari Adolfo shows a real version of the one in our clam.
Small, single-masted boats with squared sails were common utility vessels across Asia. This one is modeled on a maruko-bune, a hobikisen, or similar Japanese craft. During the Edo period (1603 – 1868) maruko-bune acted like semi-trucks, transporting goods along Lake Biwa, a major waterway. At their height, over 1,300 cargo-carrying maruko-bune traversed the long lake. Hobikisen are a wooden fishing boat indigenous to Lake Kasumigaura, the second largest in Japan. Maruko-bune only went obsolete in the 1960s and while hobikisen are no longer used as professional fishing boats, they now have a second life as pleasure crafts.
On the top of the clamshell is a dragon clutching a pearl. Japanese dragons have many attributes, but the lore that may apply here is that some are water gods – of rain, rivers, lakes and oceans. Even the clam’s underside is detailed, its stabilizing feet are snail shells! Some sellers call these vintage mollusks “hand-carved”, but they’re not. Molded of celluloid in several pieces, they were only assembled and patinaed by hand in imitation of antique figurines that really were hand-carved from real ivory. From the teeth of large mammals like elephants and whales, real ivory is expensive. Celluloid was the first plastic invented, by Alexander Parkes in England in 1855, and then refined in 1870 by Americans John Wesley Hyatt and John Kinnear as a substitute for the ivory used in billiard balls. Celluloid also stood in for amber, horn, coral and tortoiseshell and different applications were used to make 35mm movie film, clocks, toys, dice, utensil handles, combs, beaded jewelry, picture frames, even toilet seats. Celluloid arrived in Japan in 1877 and was readily adapted to many products for both home and export. Sadly, celluloid is flammable, becoming more unstable over time, hence there are stories of exploding billiard balls! Unsurprisingly, it is no longer used much, but a safer formula has been adapted for high-end products including pens and acoustically pleasing parts for accordions and guitars.
This clamshell also holds a remarkable window in time, of shocking change in Japan. The pastoral scene could be any century, but the adoption of plastic and mass production was followed in less than 70 years by the Empire’s 1940 entry into World War II. A feared military power for eons, Japan became the first (and hopefully last) country to suffer atomic bomb attacks. Upon surrender, Japan was occupied by American and Allied troops until 1952, during which much of their exports were celluloid. Multiples of this little shell holding waterwheels, or donkeys pulling carts, or the 7 Auspicious Gods were bought as gifts by American G.I.s stationed in Japan and now here we are in Oregon with a tiny piece of Japanese history on the half-shell.
Tuesday Treasures was started by our staff member, Jeanne Lusignan. Each week she will be featuring items that have been found at our estate sales. If you would like to submit a treasure for Jeanne to feature in a future installment of “Tuesday’s Treasures”, please follow the button below and send us an email! Please attach a few photos of your treasure in a beautiful setting as well as any details you have about your item such as manufacturer, use, age, region of origin. If you don’t know about the piece, that’s okay! We still might be able to research it for you! Don’t forget to tell us what makes this item such a treasure to you!