Wooden sculpture Hotei Buddha 布袋 Japan

Beautifully elaborate sculpture made from one piece of solid wood. The sculpture shows and cracks due to the setting of the wood (see photos).

To be collected from our shop in Antwerp.

Hotei 布袋. Male. The god of contentment and happiness, guardian of children, and patron of bartenders. Hotei 布袋 has a cheerful face and a big belly. He is supposedly based on an actual person, and is widely recognised outside of Japan as the Fat, Laughing Buddha. He carries a large cloth bag over his back (Nunobukuro 布袋, lit. = cloth bag), one that never empties, for he uses it to feed the poor and needy. It includes an inexhaustible cache of treasures, including food and drink. Indeed, the Japanese spelling of "Hotei" literally means "cloth bag."