Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 7.djvu/320

 artists achieved their greatest successes in figure subjects, but among specimens by Shōzui there are found some exquisitely delicate and lifelike carvings of bees, spiders, fireflies and herons.

The Omori family of Yedo is generally supposed to have been founded by Shigemitsu, who worked in the opening years of the eighteenth century, but his father, Shirohei, a samurai of Odawara, was really the first Omori carver. Chronologically, therefore, the family should have been referred to in the notice of the seventeenth century; but it is placed in the eighteenth because it did not begin to be famous until the days of Shigemitsu. The latter had the advantage of studying under two of the great Nara masters, Ichibei—mentioned above as "Miidera Ichibei"—and Yasuchika. He carved with great skill in the Nara fashion. It was by his pupil Terumasa, however, that the style of the Omori family was fixed—namely, a combination of the Nara and Yokoya methods, with extreme elaboration of detail and profuse use of all decorative adjuncts, such as inlaying and picking out with gold, silver, copper, etc. Terumasa received instruction from the great Sōmin (Yokoya) as well as from Shigemitsu, and would doubtless be remembered as a most distinguished artist had not his fame been completely eclipsed by that of his adopted son, Teruhide (1748–1798), known in art circles as Ittosai or Riu-u-sai. Teruhide was a grand chiseller. Some of his high-relief peony sprays in gold on shakudo are not inferior to Sōmin's masterpieces. He is said to have been the first to carve wave diaper in high relief, and to him was due a splendidly decorative ground of shakudo inlaid with gold in the aventurine pattern. The Sōken Kisho, [sic] says of