PietroParis

The pagoda in his hand would rather point to Bishamonten, probably part of a "Seven Lucky Gods" series. The signature Gyokuseki is very common on modern Chinese souvenirs, some even think it's a pun because in Japanese it means something like "dodgy".

Our replies crossed Piers, but great minds think alike!

To summarize: 1) it’s definitely Ono no Komachi in old age rather than a Shojo. 2) The characters appear to be the ones identified by Piers, but the signature is not included in any list of netsuke carvers. 3) the top-down hole is not what you would expect in a netsuke, but the item seems too large for an ojime (i.e., the bead that is positioned on the cord between the netsuke and the object that hangs from it). So this piece remains a bit of an enigma to me. Based on these pictures I would generically place it in the 19th century, but I can’t say exactly what it is or whether it has been tampered with at a later stage.

I’m afraid it’s something more permanent, it appears to have formed a thin film. It’s like some kind of furniture oil. There are also a few tiny blisters where the film separated from the surface:

This for the record is my own Komachi, bought from a German auction without seeing it first in hand. It was described as “bearing a shiny patina”, but I suspect that it was in fact coated with some kind of varnish by a misguided collector or "cowboy restorer"...

I think it's a particularly compact Ono no Komachi (look at hat, stick, hair and definitely non-youthful appearance). Check this link for a model with several features in common: https://www.zacke.at/auction/lot/lot-389---a-fine-nagoya-school-wood-netsuke-of-ono-no-komachi/?lot=47957 Piers' identification of the first character seems correct to me, but there are no recorded signatures that include 籍. P.S. how big is it? And is there really a hole going from top to bottom, as suggested by some of the pictures?

Hi Piers the seal is 石仙 Sekisen. Here is an excerpt from the Silverman Collection book: Note that, if we trust an article by Takeshi Yamagata in INSJ 6/1, the signature list at the end of the Silverman book appears to swap the signatures of Sekisen I and II: Also, there was a third Sekisen making Tokoname pottery in the second half of the 20th century.

Three Tatsutoshi from the recent sale of the Liebermann collection in Paris:

I doubt that the seller analyzed the metal composition. Probably they just mean that the tsuba is made of shibuichi, a silver-copper alloy where traditionally the silver is 25%. However, the actual silver content can vary a lot: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shibuichi

Seen on Facebook, an unusual design for this school, signed Tatsunao:

We've seen plenty of examples from Tatsutoshi and his students Namitoshi and Tatsunao, but this (from Facebook) is the first one I see signed Naminao: