A WONDERFUL PIECE OP CARVING.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XV, Issue 132, 3 June 1880, Page 4

A WONDERFUL PIECE OP CARVING.

By the kindness of my friend: Mr Bartlett, I have been enabled to! examine a most beautiful Japanese carving in ivQry, said to be 150 years old, and called by the Japanese net su/te or (ogle. These togles are handed down from one generation to the next, 1 and they record any remarkable event that hap ens to any member of a family. This carving is an inch and a-half long, and about as big as a walnut. It represents a lady in a quasi-leaning attitude, and at first sight it is difficult to perceive what she is doing ; but after a while the details come out magnificently. The unfortunate lady has been seized by an octopus when bathing — for the lady wears a bathing-dress. One extended arm of the octopus is in the act of coiling round the lady's neck, and she is endeavoring to pull it off with her right hand ; another arm of the sea monster is entwined round the left wrist, while the hand is fiercely tearing at the mouth of the brute. The other arms of the octopus are twined round grasping the lady's body and waist— in fact, her position reminds one very much of Laoeoon in the celebrated statue of the snakes seizing him and his two sons. The sucking dices of the octopus are carved exactly as they, are in nature, and the colour of the body of the creature, is also well represented. The face of this Japanese lady is most admirably done ;it expresses the utmost tejrror and alarm, and .possibly may be a jportrait. So carefully in the carving executed that the lady's white teeth lean be seen between her lips. The hair is a perfect gem of work ; ifc is jet black, extended down the back, and tied at the end in a knot ; in fact it is so well done that I could hardly bring myself to think it was not real hair, fastened on in some most ingenious manner ; but by examining it under a powerful magnifying glass I find it is not so— it is the result of extraordinary cleverness of carving. The back of the little white comb fixed in the thick of the black jbair adda to the effect of thia magnificent

carving of the hair. I congratulate Mr. Bartlett on the acquisition of this most beautiful curiosity. There is an inscription in Japanese characters oh the underneath part of the carving. And Mr. Bartlett and myself would of course only be too glad to get this translated. — Frank Buckland, in Land and Water*