Featured Netsuke in ivory necklace- lots of questions!!!

So here is this guy. He appears to be one of the Chinese star deities, Shou. He is part of an ivory necklace, and he is ivory. He is full of Chinese good omen symbols: the peach, a goat, cats on his shoulder, yin and yang, and he carries a gourd on his staff. I researched and read the Chinese started carving netsukes in the 1960s. Is he Chinese or Japanese? Does anyone recognize the signature on the bottom? Any guesses to age? I really have fallen in love with this piece. Thank you.

 

it's a very nice carving...
I've found the more colourful ones to be more recent works.....

 

r there holes drilled top and bottom......

I'm thinking more of a carving and less of a netsuke..

 

Maybe it is my computer but I don't see any cross hatching or schreger lines.

 

okimono

 

He is charming, Marko.
I saw these "netsuke" necklaces when I was in New York in the early 80s, so it could date from then. Many people didn't even know about Cites back then, and many sellers didn't care.

Those would be in the engraved and coloured parts, so difficult to see. But I do wonder if he is "ivorine", so good quality resin. I see some dark spots where they shouldn't be, like two on his left hand and one on his right hand.

 

Depending on how ivory is cut, we won't always see Schraeger lines. I do have two ivory necklaces with resin figures (a monkey and a dragon.) Here are some close ups....

 

Where I do see a bit of cross hatching is on the bottom, hard to photograph.

Let me know what you think...

 

ivory , like u said.......

 

I think so. The goat is actually a deer, too.

 

Ditto.

 

I can see definitely see lines on the immortal.