This week I have a mystery book that I bought at the flea market last year. It seems very old and is hand bound. All the drawings look as though they are hand drawn and are you can actually feel their texture on the page. The paper looks handmade. Unfortunately I am at a loss. I think it is japanese, but I am not sure. So if anyone can read the writing or help me to identify the pages, please let me know in the comments section. As always feel free to use any of the images on my website in your artwork but please do not post or sell the original image on the web in a group or collection. If you use one in a project and post it to your site please link it back to here or leave a comment in the comments section of the image on this site so we can all enjoy. I love to see what you create. That is what inspires me to post and collect more vintage items.
14 comments:
What an incredible book, those images are just amazing. Can't help with the identifying, sorry, but it does look rather Japanese, doesn't it?
This is an amazing book. What a great find but I'm no help in identifying it.
Fabulous collection!
Thank you!!!
Your collection is utterly amazing! I have spent a happy hour or so looking at all the wonderful images you have collected, and have downloaded your vintage calendar. I will let you know for sure if/when I make something. Thanks so much for such a wonderful site, Christine
Great pics. I believe they are Japanese.
Yes, they are definitely Japanese. I love to study antique Japanese woodblock prints. The Brooklyn Museum has a great online exhibit that's amazing. Here's a link to one that feels like the ones you have: http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/opencollection/objects/162233/The_Actors_Ichikawa_Danjuro_VIII_and_Segawa_Kikunojo_V
I hope this helps some.
Wendy
Sorry. My link got cut off. If you use the bit of link that's there and search for "Ando Hiroshige", you'll find them.
Wendy
My niece who knows a bit of Japanese said the sixth picture down on the right has characters that are "elements" like earth, fire, etc. She can't read the smaller text because it's "too old" and the one with large characters she said is Kanji and she can't read that either. I don't know if it helps, but they are certainly Japanese! :)
This is definitely Japanese and since it is old and hand bound it may actually be worth something! What an amazing find! Thanks for sharing!!!
I love anything Asian. I'm not but my husband is. Pretty sure this is Japanese art. And very old.
Thank you for sharing with us.
bobbi
It's definitely Japanese, I saw a link to it on linguaphiles community on livejournal.
Those sort of printings, they carved out the whole image of the page, and then made prints from there.
I am always amazed at how delicate/complicated the original image is, someone carves it. In the modern world I make silk screens for similar one-color printing but with chemicals, I can't imagine carving such complicated designs at that time but they did it.
If you do like woodblock traditional Japanese printing there are some great exhibits at the modern museum of art, in Tokyo, it's the same technology as those old ones but of scenes we modern people find nostalgic, of trains and what not. I definitely loved it.
I think this is the title: 白縫物語三十六編下. I guess it's the second half of a set of 36 ukiyo-e showing different scenes from Shiranui Monogatari or something like that. (Or 36 is part of the title. I think Shiranui Monogatari covers 36 years or something.)
Looking at it some more, I think it says 'Shiranui'/'Shiranui Monogatari', 'made by Kunisada' (Utagawa Kunisada the ukiyo-e artist perhaps?) and 'Tanekazu' (one of the authors of Shiranui Monogatari) all over the place. That's somewhere to start anyway.
A re-email wasn't possible so I choose this way:
Hello,
the book is vol. 36 of the "Shiranui monogatari" (Tales of Shiranui), written by Ryukatei Tanekazu and illustrated by different artists. Kunisada I signed as Toyokuni for the front pages, the content pages were designed by different pupils of him; vol. is designed by Kunisada II, signing as Kunisada. The 62 volumes of the book were published from 1849-75, vol. 36 might be published around 1855-60.
Horst Graebner
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