Negro Art: See C. H. Read and 0. M. Dalton, Antiquities from the City of Benin (1899) ; A. H. L. Fox-Pitt-Rivers, Antique Works of Art from Benin (1900) ; M. de Zayas, African Negro Art (1916) ; C. Einstein, Negerplastik (Munich, 1916) and Africanische Plastik (1921) ; H. Clouzot and A. Level, L'Art Negre et l'Art Oceanien (1919) and Sculptures Africaines et Oceaniennes (1924) ; E. von Sydow, Kunst der Naturvolker (1923) ; Handbook to the Ethnographical Collection at the British Museum (2nd ed. 1925) ; G. Hardy, L'Art negre (1927).
Splendid examples of Japanese 8th century wood-carving may be found in the phoenix and musical angels adorning the canopy hung in the KondO of Horyuji and in the gigaku masks carved in paulownia wood and preserved in the Imperial treasure-house ShosOin, the Horyuji monastery and other ancient temples in Japan. The gigaku masks in the ShosOin, numbering 164, the majority of which are in wood, the most of which are in paulownia, if not all, the rest being in dry-lacquer, are believed to have been used in connection with religious services observed at Todaiji, especially at the inauguration ceremony of the Great Buddha which took place on April 9, 752. The belief is substantiated by the carvers' signatures and dates written on the inside of the masks, and also on the original bags which contained them. In scriptions on some of the masks indicate the number of days spent in carving the mask, some being 5 and 7 and others 9 days. The wooden masks used in bugaku, the music of which is still presened and occasionally performed in the Palace, are smaller and less grotesque in appearance, as may be seen from the old masks scheduled as "national treasures" and preserved in some temples. The no masks, all carved in wood, which came into existence in the i6th century, taxed the resources of the talented carvers, and a large number of masterpieces are now in possession of the head families of the different schools of no drama.
Up to the 15th century, the work of the wood-carver was con fined to the embellishment of the temples : carvings on the pede stals, nimbus, and baldachins of Buddhist figures, and some slight ornamentations on the building itself, such as the carving of the beam-ends into animal heads and the use of the kaeru-mata, a simple decoration between the beams. But in the second half of the i6th century, the decorative wood-carving came to assume an importance in palatial mansions of the shoguns and in shrines where wood carvings were inserted into the kaeru-mata between the beams, attached under the rafters, used as the panels of the gate, etc., a large number of which may still be seen at Kitano Jinsha and Nishi Hongwanji of Kyoto, Chikubushima Jinsha in Lake Biwa, etc. The predominance of wood-carving as an archi tectural decoration in the 17th century may be seen at the mausoleums of the Tokugawa shoguns at Shiba, Tokyo, and at Nikko, where both the interior and exterior of the buildings are profusely covered with wood-carvings ranging over a wide variety of subjects faithfully executed and realistically coloured.
The taste for simplicity has not tolerated wood-carving in the architecture of dwelling houses. The only place the carver could
display his art was in ramma, the ventilating panel in the narrow partition wall over the sliding screens that separate one room from another. The ramma carving has made a special develop ment of its own, all sorts of subjects being treated : flowers and birds, animals and insects, figures in history and romance, land scapes and mists, clouds and waves, etc., carved on board to give, together with the decoration on the sliding screens, a character to the room.
Some fine carving in wood, the temple decoration in miniature scale, may be seen in the family shrine (butsu-dan) where the an cestral tablets are kept, generally fitted into a recess in the room. In their profuse and minute decoration some of the portable shrines (mikoshi), used in the procession at the festival, are also beautiful examples of the art of wood-carving. So also are the small ornaments for cabinet decoration or for the tokonoma, the recess in the guest room for objects of art. Some wonderful workmanship in wood has been produced by the netsuke (orna mental button for suspending a pouch or medicine case) carvers when many of the talented sculptors in wood turned their atten tion from carving Buddhist figures to the production of smaller objects in greater demand.
The Chinese have utilized the wood-carving more lavishly than the Japanese in their home architecture. They have carved their heavy beams on the ceiling and the massive pillars as well with delicate tracery. The simplest of their chairs and tables are in variably carved in the "key"-pattern, some simpler than others, and the doors are in delicate trelliswork design or ornamented with carvings in low relief. Lanterns with diapers or some other inter esting designs in pierced work are held by brackets or arms carved in forms of dragon heads. Although rich in variety, the designs used in the wood-carving, show a fondness for geometric patterns that is distinctly Chinese. The following are some of the other motives resorted to by the wood-carvers: emblems of richness and happiness, clouds and thunder patterns, the curious mask of a creature "TaoTieh," "The Eight Trigrams" or "Pa Kwa," "The Four Quadrants," "The Five Elements," etc. Sacred scenes and figures incised in floral scrolls, intermingled with series of conven tional emblems of one religion or another form subjects for wood carvers in decorating the Buddhist, Taoist and Confucian temples. Sacred to Buddhism are the eight symbols, the chief among which is the lotus, an emblem of purity, chosen because the lotus lifts out of the mud its rosy or white blossoms unsullied, forming a fitting resting place for the Buddha. Taoists have their symbols of eight immortals and derive many floral emblems of longevity from sa cred plants, the most prominent among which is the peach, the tree of life of their paradise, bearing fruits ripening but once in 3,000 years which confer immortality to those who partake of it. While Confucianism has no distinct emblem of its own, the symbol of culture and examples of filial piety, such as the well known 24 examples of filial piety, are sometimes attributed to it.