Spider

This netsuke, depicting a spider, has been carved from a boar’s tusk. Both eyes are inlaid. A poem has been inscribed above, and a signature below the ‘himotoshi’ (cord holes). The inscription reads as follows:
Thinking of dawn mists over Akashi bay, a boat disappears behind an island,
As the tide covers Waka Bay, a crane calls out and heads for the reeds.
Night is cold and the clothes thin as a frost comes down through the broken roof.
Kashi-no-ya
Tominaga carved this, (signature)
The first three lines are poems from the ‘Thirty-six Immortal Poets’ by Kakinomoto-no-Hitomaro, Yamabe-no-Akahito and Sumiyoshi Daimyojin. The final two lines are the sculptor’s name.
The originator of Iwami netsuke, Tomiharu, passed the first character of his name, ‘Tomi’ on to his top student, ‘Tomiaki’ and many other netsuke artists from the area also used this character in their names. Tominaga’s origins are unknown, but it is thought that he was a member of the Tomiharu School.
There are very few other known examples of Tominaga’s work in existence, but there is one netsuke of a centipede, carved in boar tusk, in the Hull Grundy Collection (British Museum).