Large hand-drum core with tigers and pines

These ornately decorated lacquer objects are the cores of handheld drums used in performances of Noh theater and Kabuki. To these cores would have been affixed a drumhead of animal hide. The lacquer decorations are in the so-called “kōdaiji” style, which was popular in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Production of kōdaiji lacquer objects, which often feature floral motifs, involved the painstaking application of many coats of black lacquer, gold and/or silver dust and flakes, and transparent lacquer.