Japanese Armour

Author: denise Noack

Japanese arts became fashionable for collection just after Japanese trade with the West opened in the mid-1800s. The collection in the Smoking Room at Martindale Hall highlights a trend in the collection and display of Japanese objects in the grand homes of Australia and elsewhere at the turn of the twentieth century.1

The Smoking Room contains a variety of Japanese objects, from masks and statuettes to lacquer boxes and swords. Several of the more valuable Japanese objects from Martindale Hall were dispersed by Dorothy Mortlock in 1965. A pair of spectacularly large cloisonné vases went to Ayers House Museum, along with a bronze Norimitsu elephant, and a lacquered dragon cabinet was donated to the Art Gallery of South Australia. The most prominent Japanese object still in the Smoking Room is the Japanese suit of armour, which is also a fabulous piece for 3D digitisation. As with many of the objects in the Smoking Room, however, identifying provenance is complicated by the absence of documentation.

The suit of armour is thought to date from the Edo period (1615-1868) but is most likely eighteenth to early nineteenth century.2 It is considered a very good example of its kind. The armour is made of iron, a copper-gold alloy (shakudō), gold, lacquer, leather, and silk cord, and features a helmet, or kabuto, and a black facemask complete with bristling moustache. The lacquered chainmail is considered unusual. Although it is often referred to as a Samurai suit, this cannot be confirmed as this type of armour was not exclusive to the Samurai class.

A feature article on the furniture and contents of Martindale Hall published in South Australian Homes and Gardens in 1932 suggests that W. T. Mortlock and his son and heir, Jack, were jointly responsible for acquiring the pieces at Martindale. The first recorded picture of this armour appeared in a 1932 article on Martindale Hall in South Australian Homes and Gardens.3

First evidence of the Japanese armour in the Smoking Room in 1932. It is located to the right of the dragon cabinet, which is now in the Art Gallery of South Australia collection. South Australian Homes and Gardens, 1 March 1932, 31.

W. T. Mortlock spent eight years in England (1874-1881), where he attended Cambridge University. It is possible that he brought home Japanese decorative pieces from Britain, where the taste for Japanese applied arts was sparked by the opening of stores such as Liberty and Co. He is also known to have visited England in 1903 and 1912. Like his father, Jack Mortlock also headed to Cambridge and would have had access to the London Japanese art market. Jack’s stay was short, and he was only nineteen when he returned from London in 1913 to take control of the family estate after the death of his father. There is no current evidence of any of the Mortlocks visiting Japan. It has been suggested that the Japanese armour and collection of exotic weapons in the Smoking Room were added in about the 1920s.4

Japanese armour was in circulation domestically and abroad in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and it was not necessary to visit Japan to obtain some. Many suits of armour were purchased in Britain, a few may have been bought at the international exhibitions, and a few may have been acquired by travellers to Japan. There is early evidence of Japanese armour available for purchase in Adelaide in a display of Chinese and Japanese goods in the Adelaide Town Hall in December 1875. In August 1879 a suit of Japanese armour was exhibited at a YMCA ‘conversazione’. At the Adelaide Exhibition of the Arts and Industries of All Nations held in 1881 a Japanese suit of armour of ‘very ancient date but in excellent preservation’ was on display in the German Court. In 1882, Japanese armour was on display at the Crystal Brook Institute, with several suits on show at the 1885 Norwood Art Exhibition. The Port Adelaide Museum had armour donated in 1883 by a ship’s captain who had travelled via Japan, and another in 1888 from an Adelaide professor. Japanese items were for sale at the Adelaide Jubilee Exhibition in 1888 and independently and concurrently there was a whole Japanese Village established in Garner’s Rooms on King William Street.5

Next door to Martindale Hall was Kadlunga, a property belonging to Sir Samuel Way, the Chief Justice of South Australia and president of the Public Library, Museum and Art Gallery. Way was a significant art collector and upon his death in 1916 became the single largest donor of Japanese art to the Art Gallery of South Australia. A large number of Japanese objects were auctioned after Way’s death in 1916 and Way may well have been a source of Japanese objects for the Mortlocks. As well as being a neighbour, the Mortlocks inhabited the same social circles as the Way family, with Samuel’s brother, Edward Willis Way, joining local yachting expeditions with W. T. Mortlock.6

Footnotes

  1. Jennifer Harris, ‘The Formation of the Japanese Art Collection at the Art Gallery of South Australia 1904–1940: Tangible Evidence of Bunmei Kaika’ (PhD diss., University of Adelaide, 2012). ↩︎
  2. Jennifer Harris, ‘A Golden Era: Japanese Arts from Martindale Hall Reunited’, The World of Antiques & Art, no. 76 (2009): 10–12. ↩︎
  3. ‘Martindale Hall, Mintaro, the Residence of Mr J. T. Mortlock’, South Australian Homes and Gardens, March 1932, 27–34. ↩︎
  4. Peter Bell, ‘Historical Summary’, Martindale Hall Conservation Management Plan Rev. A, November 2021, 12–28. ↩︎
  5. Evening Journal, 22 December 1875, 2; The Express and Telegraph, 28 August 1879, 2; Evening Journal, 6 August 1881, 3; Express and Telegraph, 26 December 1882, 2; Evening Journal, 16 October 1883, 3; Adelaide Observer, 9 May 1885, 31; Evening Journal, 4 July 1887, 2. ↩︎
  6. Critic, 23 April 1898, 18. ↩︎