11Story

08 May 2009

The Drasche-Wartinberg Collection, 1877

Made in Japan

Contents - The Early Collections before the Opening of Japan - The Austro-Hungarian East Asia Expedition 1868-1871 - The Vienna World Exhibition 1873 - The Drasche-Wartinberg Collection 1877 - The Troll Collection 1886 - The Siebold Collection 1889     - Este Collection 1893 - The Kreiner Collection 1964, 1966 and 1969 - The Haga Collection 1965 and 1969 - The Kubō Collection 1987−1989 - The Collections of Curators - HARU – SPRING

 

 

The Drasche-Wartinberg Collection, 1877

 

Born to a bourgeois Vienna family, Richard von Drasche-Wartinberg (1850−1923) had the necessary financial means to undertake lengthy travels. His father Heinrich von Drasche, an entrepreneur and owner of extensive lands and a brickworks, became one of the richest men in the Austrian monarchy due to the great need for bricks during the construction of the Ringstrasse buildings. From June 1875 to November 1876, Richard von Drasche-Wartinberg traveled on an extended geological research voyage to study volcanoes in the Indian Ocean region and in East Asia. The results of this endeavor were 754 well-documented volcanic stone samples that he donated, along with a group of ethnographic objects, to the Imperial and Royal Court Natural History Museum. He also ascended Mt. Fuji with the photographer Raimund von Stillfried-Ratenic. The Japanese ethnographic collection assembled by Drasche-Wartinberg, donated to the museum in 1877, includes 23 individual inventory numbers but can be considered as the foundation of the Japan collection due to the high quality of the objects.

 

 

Japanese guitars  © Museum of Ethnology, Vienna.

 

 

Drasche-Wartinberg´s collection includes three complete suits of armour, among them this one made in Japan (wasai), a “modern” samurai armour tōsei gusoku in the western style (nanban), that allowed for more mobility than the older yoroi armours. The breast-plate is inspired by Italian-Spanish armour from around 1560, the helmet by a Dutch model from the early seventeenth century. The gold and silver decorations of the breast-plate, which include five Sanskrit signs, show Indian-Buddhist influences. As the helmet’s brow-plate is decorated with two Tokugawa family crests, the armour may be attributed to the ruling family of the Tokugawa Shoguns.

 

 

Samurai armour tōsei gusoku - wasei nanban dō signed Sōmin, early 17th century, Inv.-no: 5258 © Museum of Ethnology, Vienna.

 

 

 

 

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