Title : Surimono Print

Artist : Unknown

Date : Meiji Copy A

Details : More information...

Source : Robyn Buntin of Honolulu
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Description : Utamaro This is a copy of a surimono, a so-called Akashi copy, named after the Japanese town where they were faithfully reproduced in the 1890s. Many of these copies (the 'copy-A' versions) show the same elaborate printing techniques as the originals of the early 19th century. That is why they were taken for originals as late as into the 1970s. It was only in the ground-breaking publication of Roger Keyes, THE ART OF SURIMONO, that their existence was documented for the first time. 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. So it doesn't come as a surprise that Akashi copies have become collectors' items within the last years, not only because of their incredible faithfulness to the originals, but above all because of their true beauty. There is an example of this print in Edythe Polster and Alfred H. Marks' SURIMONON PRINTS BY ELBOW pp. 450, 459, Woman with Fox. This might be called Who Entraps Whom? as a woman looks at a trap holding a mushroom, while in the background a fox holds a rope snare. The poem translates: How exciting this For country recreation Playing Catch the Fox With pretty young woman Around about the haystack!

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