Surimono
Surimono ( Japanese 刷 (り) 物 or 摺 (り) 物 , printed matter ' ) is a special form of Japanese woodblock print . The term refers to greeting cards that have been commissioned by individuals, poets' associations , companies such as restaurants or theaters and given away to friends and acquaintances on various occasions. In contrast to the usual colored woodblock prints, surimono were not intended for commercial sale.
Surimono were produced over a period of approximately 150 years between approx. 1730 and approx. 1880. Most of the designs for the prints come from Ukiyo-e artists, but artists from other Japanese painting schools have also drawn templates for surimono. The formats of the prints range from small sheets with the dimensions 6 cm × 8 cm to large formats with the dimensions 36 cm × 58 cm. Many of the surimono still preserved today were produced using a complex and costly printing process that could also include gold and silver effects . As early as the end of the 19th century , they became coveted objects among collectors of Japanese woodblock prints from Europe and the USA , and they have also been highly valued in Japan since the second half of the 20th century .
Occasions and styles
The first surimono emerged in the first half of the 18th century . Occasions such as changing the name of an actor or artist , an invitation to a music or theater performance or, for example, the announcement of a store opening were the reasons for their printing . They were also sent as a farewell gift when going on a longer journey or on the occasion of the commemoration days prescribed in Buddhism . The most common occasion, however, were prints related to the New Year festival ( Saitan surimono), which were thematically divided into the motifs New Year ( Saitan , 歳 旦 ), spring fun ( Shunkyō , 春 興 ) and gifts at the end of the year ( Seibo , 歳 暮 ). After 1840, such “occasional surimono” went out of fashion and are only rarely detectable.
Keisai Eisen, Shikishiban, around 1825
Kikugawa Eishin, Shikishiban, around 1820
Kubo Shunman, Shikishiban, around 1820
Harukawa Goshichi, Shikishiban, around 1825
Surimono production experienced its climax in the form of the surimono printed with at least one 31-syllable joke poem, a kyōka ( 狂歌 ). At the beginning of the 19th century, the Kyōka movement had spread all over Japan, and Edo in particular had at least one poets' circle in each district. Kyōka surimono developed from New Year's surimono, which were provided with a poem by the leaders of the poetry circle and distributed to students and members, and from the Kyōka-ehon (books of Kyōka poems). Particularly successful poems that had been awarded at poetry competitions were printed on single sheets and given away to club members . The clients were the leaders of the circles or the authors of the poems themselves. Those who could afford it commissioned particularly lavishly designed prints. The most elaborately printed and the most carefully designed surimono originate from the period from approx. 1810 to approx. 1830.
A sub-form of the Kyōka surimono were the theater surimono ( Shibai surimono, 芝 居 刷 物 ). They were published by poets' circles, the members of which appeared as ardent admirers of the Kabuki theater. Surimono were commissioned to celebrate outstanding actors, who were also the preferred motif on prints of this type, in particular around the circle “Mimasu” ( Mimasu-ren , 三 升 連 ), which was based in Edo .
In the course of the 1830s, the production of surimono came to an almost complete standstill. The Kyōka movement had passed its peak. The hunger disasters of the early pace -years (1830-1843) and the subsequent general economic crisis had clearly left their mark. In the early 1840s, the Bakufu made an attempt to counter the difficulties in the country with the help of the Tempō reforms .
The reform laws contained, among other things, a whole series of so-called "anti-luxury provisions". Although it did not include a direct ban on making surimono, none were printed in the 1840s. It was not until the 1850s that some were produced again, but to a much lesser extent than before. Especially in Kamigata, today Osaka , haikai surimono can be identified, which were mainly designed by artists from the Shijō school. But in terms of both printing and artistic design, they never reached the high standard of the years from 1810 to 1830.
The picture calendars, the Egoyomi ( 絵 暦 ) , which appeared in the first half of the 18th century , were typically also provided with a poem from the end of the 18th century and called Daishō surimono ( 大小 刷 物 , “prints of the long and short months ") designated. They are a sub-form of the surimono.
Another special form of surimono are efūtō ( 絵 封 筒 ), decorated envelopes. Letters, as well as the actual surimono, were inserted into them and sent. They could also be elaborately designed and designed by artists.
Occasionally, in the literature, collectors and dealers the term Shunga surimono is used for those Shunga prints that are comparable in their print quality to that of the best surimono prints. However, since shunga were products of the Japanese publishing industry intended for commercial sale, this name is incorrect.
Design and artist
Surimono usually had no title, the only exceptions being a few prints that appeared as part of a series. Most are illustrated and printed with at least one poem. Some are only illustrated and may have been intended as an attachment to a handwritten invitation or could be described. Only a few of the surimono, which were exclusively printed with poems, have survived, as they were not considered worthy of collection.
Many Kyōka surimono have two poems, and some have three or more. Up to 100 poems can be found on Haikai surimono. As far as the prints contain poems, they are always signed, but not with the true name of the author, but with a pseudonym , as was the general custom in the poets' associations. As a rule, it is not possible to find out the real name of the poet. But as far as is known, the authors include daimyo , samurai , professional poets as well as simple merchants and craftsmen.
In many cases, special calligraphers were commissioned to design the writing on the prints . They tried to give the typeface a decorative effect by using different font styles at the same time , by dividing lines, by offsetting the lines and by dividing the fonts. In some exceptional cases, the calligraphers also signed the prints.
The motifs on the illustrated sheets ranged from still lifes with exquisite objects (writing utensils, musical instruments, pieces of armor, etc.) to beautiful women ( bijin ), figure and upper body portraits of actors, landscapes, animals and plants to simple graphic elements.
The illustrations for the prints were almost always designed by a graphic designer or artist alone. In many cases they are designed by representatives of ukiyo-e . Best known among them is Katsushika Hokusai , who designed several hundred surimono. Some of his students like Hokuba, Shinsai and especially Hokkei were also very successful in drawing templates for surimono. Also Keisai iron and members of the Utagawa School as Toyokuni I. , Toyoshige , Kuniyoshi , Kunisada , Hiroshige and others were frequently commissioned to design of Surimono. More than 250 surimono prints are known by Kunisada alone.
However, orders for the design of surimono were also given to artists who otherwise did not design colored woodcuts or who did not belong to the circle of ukiyo-e artists, e.g. B. to the Ukiyo-e painter Sunayama Gosei, the poet Yashima Gakutei, to painters of the Shijō school such as Kō Sukoku II and Matsukawa Hanzan, the Rimpa painter Sakai Hōitsu, the Nanga painter Ishikawa Kazan and Kubo Shunman, den Kanō painter Oishi Matora and many others. In particular, Gakutei and Shunman, who also worked as publishers for surimono, are among the most important surimono artists.
A few prints have been designed jointly by several artists. Such joint work can be found in depictions of the “ Seven Gods of Luck ”, other New Year's prints and some memory pictures ( Shini-e , 死 絵 ). For example, a New Year's print from Utagawa School artists has ten different signatures.
Print and formats
The well-known publishers of the colored woodcuts were usually commissioned with the design and production of the surimono. They distributed the tasks and organized the production process. It is likely, however, that the clients expressed their wishes in relation to the artist who was to provide the draft of the picture part and that the publishers hired the preferred candidate. Since surimono were not intended for commercial sale, they did not have to be submitted to the censorship and consequently do not bear any censorship or publisher seals.
Surimono were very often produced in an elaborate printing process. Essentially, however, there was no difference to normal woodblock prints. Only the paper used was regularly of the best quality ( Hōsho-gami , 奉 書 紙 ), as it was also used for calligraphy, and the color palette was in most cases more subtle. As on other luxury woodblock prints , there are color shading, blind printing , polishing, mica powder and metal effects such as copper , silver and gold imitation . How elaborately a print was designed depended not least on the financial strength of the client. In most cases, the use of the complex printing techniques was reserved for the Kyōka surimono of the 2nd and 3rd decades of the 19th century.
With the Kyōka and Haikai surimono, the biggest difference to the production of normal woodblock prints was the commissioning of another artist, the calligrapher, to carry out the writing and the commissioning of special wood cutters to cut the special printing plate for the writing. The manufacture of these special printing plates in other workshops can be seen from the fact that the position of the texts differs slightly from one print to the next and that there were therefore no registration marks ( Kentō ) that would have guaranteed the millimeter-precise correspondence with the other printing plates.
According to the purpose, surimono only had small editions of perhaps 100 to 200 copies per print. Most of them were created as single prints; Occasionally there are also diptychs and triptychs that belong together . There are entire series of over 20 sheets of Kyōka prints in particular . In individual cases, such series were reprinted by the publishers and sold commercially in a slightly different form, without a poem or poems known to the public and without the seal of the poets' circle. In such cases, the editions are likely to have been comparable to those of simple colored woodcuts and were between 500 and 1000 copies in number.
The dimensions of the prints varied, depending on how big the original sheet of paper ( Daiōban , also Ō-ōban ( 大大 判 ), dimensions: 39–44 cm × 54–58 cm) was from which the papers were cut for printing.
Until around 1780, prints in the half Koban format ( 小 判 ) were the most common. Until then, the surimono had mostly been produced without special printing techniques. After that, more and more complex printing processes were used and the larger Koban format became the most commonly used format (dimensions: 13–15 cm × 18–22 cm). It was created from a base sheet cut into eight equal parts and was printed in both vertical ( Tate-e , 縦 絵 ) and horizontal ( Yoko-e , 横 絵 ) directions.
At the beginning of the 19th century, the Shikishiban format ( 色 紙 判 ), also known as Kakuban ( 角 判 ) (dimensions: 18–19.5 cm × 19–22 cm), was increasingly used. For this purpose, the base sheet was cut into six equal parts, which resulted in an approximately square sheet. From around 1810 until the 1830s it was the standard format for surimono. The Yoko-nagaban ( 横 長 判 ) is a very broad format . It was found when the base arch was divided vertically in half (dimensions: 19.5–22 cm × 54–58 cm). Originally, however, the entire base sheet was often printed in the Yoko-nagaban format. On one half there was the illustration with the poem or poems, on the other half the program of the event to which the invitation was made could be read. On most of the existing prints, this part of the text, which could have been on the upper or lower half, has been cut off and lost, leaving the yoko-nagaban .
Occasionally there are prints in the Daiōban format in which the entire sheet of paper was printed with illustration and / or poetry. In a few exceptional cases, the surimono is printed on a normal, horizontal Ōban format ( 大 判 ), as was used for most of the colored woodcuts of the late Edo period.
Collecting surimono
As far as surimono contained invitations, simple greetings or the like, there was seldom any reason to keep them for long periods of time. Very few of these prints have survived. Kyōka and Haikai associations comprised up to a few hundred members, among whom the prints produced by their own association were distributed. The members collected the prints in albums and passed them on within the family. Only a few of these albums have been fully preserved to this day and are in the possession of museums . Most of them have been destroyed by fire and water over the decades.
What was not destroyed, along with tens of thousands of other woodcuts, came to the West in the last quarter of the 19th century , particularly to Great Britain , France and the USA. Surimono first found attention in France (from around 1880) and with the beginning of the 20th century also in the USA. The best prints fetched almost the same prices at auctions as the coveted landscape prints by Hokusai.
The prints sold at this time were from the heyday of surimono printing in Japan. They represented the Kyōka prints produced with high financial outlay and were regularly in excellent condition, as their storage in albums protected them from fading of the colors. As long as surimono that are sold today can be traced back to the same sources, their collection history is traceable and the colors of the prints are not destroyed by incorrect storage, they still fetch very high prices at auctions.
Japanese traders recognized as early as the late 19th century that surimono are rare and highly sought after by collectors. One of the methods to achieve higher sales was the forgery of signatures on prints by less sought-after artists, for example a Kunisada became a Hokkei or a Hiroshige. To a greater extent, however, the frauds were made possible by reprinting original templates. Facsimiles were made from the prints of sought-after artists such as Hokusai, Gakutei and Shunman .
Entire print series were created that were specifically intended for the Western market, as the envelopes with English-language imprints in which they were packed show. Unscrupulous dealers also liked to sell such prints as originals without the envelopes. There is hardly a large collection in the museums of the West that does not contain such reprints. At first glance, these reprints can hardly be distinguished from the originals: the paper and print quality are as complex as the originals. Only a second look reveals that the lines are stiffer and the overall print is less fine. Roger Keyes referred to these early reprints as A-surimono in order to distinguish them from the later, poorly printed variants, in which paper of poorer quality was regularly used and the special features such as polishing and metallic effects were omitted. According to Keyes, the latest of these prints, the D-surimono, were made in the 1930s. Surimono are a popular, but also very difficult collecting area because of the large number of reprints on the market.
exhibition
- 2008: Surimono. The art of allusion in Japanese wood prints , Museum Rietberg , Zurich
See also
literature
- John T. Carpenter: Brochure on the occasion of the special exhibition "Surimono: The Art of Allusion in Japanese Wood Prints" in the Museum Rietberg Zurich. Zurich 2008.
- John T. Carpenter: Reading Surimono - The Interplay of Text and Image in Japanese Prints. Leiden 2008, ISBN 90-04-16841-9 .
- Joan B. Murviss, John T. Carpenter: The Frank Lloyd Wright Collection of Surimono. New York 1995, ISBN 0-8348-0327-5 .
- Edith Polster, Alfred H. Marks: Surimono: Prints by Elbow. Washington D. C. 1980.
- Friedrich B. Schwan: Handbook Japanese Woodcut. Backgrounds, techniques, themes and motifs. Academium, Munich 2003, ISBN 3-89129-749-1 .
- Steffi Schmidt, Setsuko Kuwabara: Surimono - Precious Japanese woodblock prints from the Museum for East Asian Art, Berlin. Berlin 1990, ISBN 3-496-01071-1 .
- Doris Spalinger (Ed.): Surimono. The art of allusion in Japanese woodblock prints. Verlag Museum Rietberg, Zurich 2008, ISBN 978-3-907077-43-6 .
Web links
- Haikai Surimono Database. Waseda University , accessed on July 30, 2012 (English, searchable by occasion, such as the seasons, etc.).
- Entry in the Japanese Architecture and Art Net Users System (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Murviss, Carpenter, p. 15
- ↑ a b c d e Schwan, p. 149
- ↑ a b c Carpenter, brochure, p. 8
- ↑ a b Schwan, p. 150
- ^ Carpenter, brochure, p. 14
- ^ Carpenter, brochure, p. 7
- ↑ Schmidt, p. 12
- ↑ a b c Murviss, Carpenter, p. 17
- ↑ Murviss, Carpenter, p. 14
- ↑ a b Carpenter, brochure, p. 2
- ↑ a b c Schwan, p. 151
- ↑ Schwan, p. 122 and p. 521
- ↑ in Schmidt, p. 216 f an example by an anonymous artist with 93 poems
- ^ Schmidt, p. 15
- ^ Schmidt, p. 14
- ↑ Schmidt, p. 23 ff
- ↑ Collection of approx. 240 Kunisada surimono in the Kunisada Project (English), accessed on July 30, 2012
- ↑ Example in Schmidt, p. 42 f
- ↑ Example in Schmidt, p. 30 f
- ↑ Example in Schmidt, p. 202 f
- ↑ Example in Schmidt, p. 44 f
- ↑ Example in Schmidt, p. 52 f
- ↑ Example in Schmidt, p. 122 f
- ↑ Example in Schmidt, p. 184 f
- ^ Example in the database of the Spencer Museum of Art, inventory number 0000.1518
- ↑ See: Kunisada Project A collection of some Kunisada Surimono Beasts and others : joined work by ten students of Toyokuni I: Kunimitsu I., Toyokuni II., Toyotoshi (son of Toyokuni I), Kunishige, Kunisada, Kunitsugu, Kunitsuna, Kuniyoshi , Kunimune, Kunihide (English), there also further examples of co-productions by several artists, accessed on August 10, 2012
- ↑ Schwan, p. 146
- ↑ Schwan, p. 147, Carpenter, brochure, p. 7
- ^ Carpenter, brochure, p. 5; in Murviss, Carpenter, p. 16, a series of surimono designed by Hokusai is mentioned, which comprised 36 sheets
- ↑ Schwan, p. 147, Carpenter, brochure, p. 271-282, p. 150 f
- ↑ Schwan, p. 148 f, p. 273
- ^ Richard Lane: Images from the Floating World. , Alpine Fine Arts Collection, London 1978, ISBN 0-88168-889-4 , p. 309
- ↑ Murviss, Carpenter, p. 21 f
- ↑ Murviss, Carpenter, p. 22 ff
- ↑ See e.g. B. Pierre Bergé & Associés: Ukiyo-e ou les images du monde flottant. Peintures, estampes, livres et dessins de la Chine et du Japon. Provenant de la Collection personnelle de Huguette Berès, de la Galerie Berès et d'une collection privée européenne. Auction catalog, volumes I to IV, Paris 2010
- ↑ a b Murviss, Carpenter, p. 20
- ↑ Hiroko Johnson: Early Provenance Histories. P. 36. In: A. Marks and SR Quintanilla: Dreams and Diversions , Seattle 2010, reports of a brazen example of a fraud, according to which the dealers Hayashi Kyūgo and Takamizawa Enji in 1919 at one stroke 1500 forged Japanese woodcuts to the American Frank Lloyd Wright sold.
- ^ Roger Keyes in: The Art of Surimono: Privately Published Japanese Woodblock Prints and Books in the Chester Beatty Library, Dublin. Volume 2, Appendix. New York, 1985
- ↑ Bruce Brooks Pfeiffer: Collecting Japanese Art. In: Murviss, Carpenter, pp. 3–9.
