МАЭ № 13-34/14

Kitchen at the Bridegroom’s House. Series “the Life of the Japanese”.

Japanese

1820-s

silk textile, Japanese watercolours, ink, Japanese washigami paper, glue

32.5 × 43.7

List portrays a kitchen at the house of the bridegroom, where food for the wedding ceremony is being prepared. Through the small window on the left we can see a menu (suimono, "water things," are things to drink, suimono "slurping things" are soups drunk from bowls). The spiny lobsters and sea bream tails are symbols of success and celebration (in a bit of word play, the sea bream’s Japanese name tai alludes to the word medetai "congratulations." A kamado cooking stove can be seen inside the kitchen-house interior.

Ethnographic drawing