Monkey King bears the Burden of Immortality

That was the writing of the pop part of this mom and pop venue. Here is the mom: This is a very common motif and has likely been carved a million times in the past few hundred years.

All Netsukes (NET skiis) tell some kind of story. Often you need to do the research that results in things like the paragraph above. I'm not much of a researcher these days, so I guess I miss a lot.

This carving came to us by means of the Uncle's (see below) so we know it's over twenty years old.

This was carved from boxwood and is 2 inches tall.

We were quite delighted to find this and ten other Netsukes left to us when the last of two uncles passed away. We thought we had listed all of them six or more months ago. We remembered them from our visits to all Ken's homes through the years we visited him and his life partner of sixty-five years, another art teacher named Uncle Bob. I first saw them (the uncles and the Netsukes heavy with Kappas)in Kenosha, WI, when the masculine part of this little mom and pop business took me to meet his father figure after he proposed. That was 28 years ago. It is the only proof I have that this Monkey if Immortality is vintage. We've seen a prototypes like this in more than one of our Netsuke books.

Mostly what we are finding is that there are favorite designs that get carved over and over and over again, some changing very little in two hundred years.

Item ID: 2094