#utamaro

[nobrashfestivity]

Kitagawa Utamaro, Takashima Ohisa Using Two Mirrors to Observe Her Coiffure, c. 1795, woodblock print, ink and color on paper, 36.3 x 25 cm (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)

Mary Cassatt, The Coiffure, 1890–91, color drypoint and aquatint on laid paper, 43.2 x 30.7 cm (National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.)

[uwmspeccoll]

Decorative Sunday: Commemorative Stamps and Ukiyo-E Prints

Today we highlight a set of Ukiyo-E prints of classic Japanese artworks. These prints were released by the Ministry of Postal Service in 1964 in celebration of that year’s Olympic Games, held in Tokyo. Each print was featured as a commemorative postage stamp between the years 1949 and 1963. The prints were hand-made using traditional woodblock techniques, though reduced in scale from the originals. Kyoto Hanga-In published the prints out of Tokyo.

The prints feature the Kitagawa Utamaro (1751-1805) piece Beautiful Woman Playing a Glass Flute; Mt. Fuji Viewed Through Ocean Waves, by Katsushika Hokusai (1759-1849); and four works by Ando Hiroshige (1797-1858): Moon and Geese, Nihonbashi Bridge, Yui, and Kyoto.

See more Decorative Sunday posts!

--Amanda, Special Collections Graduate Intern

[susanoos-wife]

Bullfinch and Scops Owl, by Utamaro

[mariean2inette]

Beauty Applying Makeup by Kitagawa Utamaro

[poesie-in-flux]

[lionofchaeronea]

Noda River in Mitsu (from the series The Six Crystal Rivers Newly Fashioned), Utamaro, ca. 1804

[love1kimono]

Utamaro, 1788

Scanned from the book "Lalique", Museum Calouste Gulbenkian.

"This woodblock engraving, showing insects from japan, made by Utamaro, a master of the ukyio-e style, present motifs that were frequently depicted in drawings of the age and served as inspiration for René Lalique's jewels."

[matyas-ss]

Kushi, Kitagawa Utamaro (c.1795). Woodblock print