Title : Mother and Child looking at Moon

Artist : Katsushika Hokusai

Date : Meiji Copy B

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Source : Robyn Buntin of Honolulu
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Description : Original surimono were often commissioned by poetry circles and privately published. Surimono represent the peak in Japanese woodblock printing techniques. Their costly production resulted in very limited editions of a handful of impressions of each design only. Most copies of surimono were published at the end of the ninetenth or the beginning of the twentieth-century. The majority of then were based on surimono in the square format that had been published in the city of Edo (modern Tokyo) in the 1810 and 1820s. The ground-breaking publication of Roger Keyes, THE ART OF THE SURIMONO, provided an effective categorization of these surimono copies. This is a Group B copy. The paper often has a typical brown tone, perhaps because of the substance used for sizing it. Group B copies were produced for sale to foreigners and were issued in sets of fifty or more. They probably were copied from other copies (Group A) which were based on originals.

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