HIDDEN TREASURES OF JAPANESE ART

First edition: 291 pages, mainly coloured plates with some folding double-page photographs, beige cloth titled gilt with gilt vignette on the upper cover and spine, a very good copy in pictorial dust jacket.

Text by Barry Davies. Includes an inscription by previous owner, Irwin Baldé, recording a humorous interchange with Mendel Kaplan, part owner of the collection and author of the foreword. The original collector was his father, Isaac Kaplan.

Also included are loose inserts of the exhibition invitation and the A5 Exhibition catalogue which lists the 200 Netsuke exhibited.

Netsuke are miniature ceremonial Japanese carvings which were worn by the newly affluent merchant classes during the time of the Samurai. Kaplan's collection is one of the largest and most noted worldwide. The 200 Items included (from the 600-item collection) date between the 17th and 19th centuries and were crafted by leading Japanese artists.