Some favourite subjects:
Some favourite subjects:
Otake Kokkan. [Shin'an Sei-Ro Senkyoku Sugoroku]. Tokyo, Hakubunkan 1905 (Meiji 38). Colour broadside 55x79cm. A few pinholes; rather good. Au$300
The new year gift from the magazine Shashin Gaho. This may be muted and delicate at first glance but there is plenty of turmoil on land and sea. And it looks to me you could learn all you really need to know about the Russo-Japanese war. There's a lot packed in.
Otake was a well regarded, prize winning, Nihonga painter who was firm about maintaining Japanese tradition but like many such artists was a busy producer of prints and illustrator of magazines, books and advertisements.
Hikifuda & Sugoroku. [Nichiro Kinen Sugoroku]. n.p. [1905?]. Colour lithograph 26x37cm. A bit smudged and rumpled, pretty good. Au$300
I have seen a few hikifuda made as sugoroku but they have been staid affairs featuring birds, flowers and graceful women in flowing kimonos. This exuberant advertisement game celebrates the Russo-Japanese war victory.
These hikifuda - small posters or handbills - were usually produced with the text panel blank. The customer, usually a retailer, had their own details over printed.
BINET, Rene. Esquisses Decoratives. Paris, Librairie Centrale des Beaux-Arts [c1905]. Folio, loose as issued in four fascicules in illustrated wrappers, all in publisher's portfolio of cloth backed illustrated boards; [2],14pp and 60 plates, 13 pochoir and a few others with a second colour added, b/w illustrations through the text. A rather good copy. Au$2000
Binet, like many architects and designers, followed Haeckel into the microscopic world for grotesque and fantastic inspiration but married such modernity with historicism in a singular way. Durant (in 'Ornament') calls Binet 'in many respects the typical French Art Nouveau designer' which, apart from being too dismissive, is just not right. Many of his designs, particularly the coloured graphics, are ultra modern high art nouveau but much of his work has an oddly arcane, recherche effect - in which something as modern as an electric light switch modelled on the forms of diatomes or radiolaria and treated with Beaux Arts tradition becomes a mysterious if not menacing almost gothic artifact. Without claiming anything of the same stature, or even similar results, for Binet he could probably be more usefully likened to Gaudi. This is an exposition of ideas for every school of design that Binet could encompass - from architectural detail to pochoir graphics; shop fronts to tapestry; stained glass to gardens; jewellery to mosaics.
Takeuchi Keishu & Iwaya Sazanami. [Shin'an keiba Yugi]. Tokyo, Shonen Sekai 1906 (Meiji 39). Colour broadside 53x79cm. A nice copy with the playing pieces and extra bits intact. Au$125
In this steeplechase game - the new year gift from the boys' magazine Shonen Sekai - artist Takeuchi and writer Iwaya share credit. While that's not so uncommon with sugoroku I'm not sure what the writer had to do here. At the same time that Takeuchi was doing illustrations for children's magazines he was also producing refined ukiyo-e albums of porn. They look nothing like this.
Kaburagi Kiyokata & Miyagawa Haru? [Boken Sugoroku]. Shonenkai 1906 (Meiji 39). Colour broadside 47x63cm. Folded as issued, rather good. Au$300
Don't be fooled by the elegant and delicate artwork. This new year gift from the boy's magazine Shonenkai is filled with adventure, peril and slaughter. Nothing with fur, fin or feather - if large enough - is safe from these boys on their jaunt round the world. When they aren't shooting eagles they are clubbing seals.
No artist is named but a 2016 exhibition at the Shinjuku Historical Museum attributed this game to Kaburagi and Miyagawa.
Furuya Korin. [Take Zukushi]. Kyoto, Unsodo 1906 (Meiji 39). 18x25cm publisher's boards; 50 colour woodcut designs on 25 double leaves, accordian folding. Light signs of use, a rather good copy. Au$1650
Exquisite printing, with metallic inks and dustings of mica, of often exquisite designs by the foremost of neo-Rimpa designers. One of three independent portfolios of designs by Korin each devoted to one plant. This one is bamboo. The others are pines and plums. Korin, whose name is taken from the original master, started as a gifted but unsurprising designer - prolific and workmanlike in ambition compared to Sekka. But come the twentieth century - the final years of his life; he died young in 1910 - his albums of designs (rather than art) need no apology.
Catalogue - Garden Furniture. John P. White, Bedford. A Complete Catalogue of Garden Furniture and Garden Ornament. By John P. White, The Pyghtle Works, Bedford ... Xmas, 1906. Bedford 1906. Quarto publisher's printed wrapper (a missing piece from the back wrapper expertly replaced); 112pp illustrated in line and photo throughout. A couple of related flyers loosely inserted, quite a good copy. Au$875
From pots to bridges and greenhouses; an extensive range, essential for the chic but thoroughly English - ie Arts & Crafts - garden. White made furniture designed by Baillie Scott and some of this stuff may well be his but the designs here are, with two exceptions, uncredited except by inference from a passing remark to White himself. The two credited are by The Hon. Mrs. Anstruther. You don't withold credit from someone like her.
Many of the drawings are signed and while it isn't clear that the artist was also the designer those signed 'J.C.' are likely by James Crossland who designed furniture for White at about this time.
Kameda Yoshiro (or Kichirobei). [Wayo Kenchiku Shin Hinagata]. Osaka, Seikado 1907 (Meiji 40). Six volumes 22x15cm, publisher's wrappers with title labels; illustrated throughout with plans, elevations, measured drawings etc. Wrappers with some surface rubbing or insect grazing; a pretty good set. Au$850
I'm not sure whether this should be described as Japanese principles applied to western design or the other way round. I think both, if it matters. An excellent builder's pattern book that was certainly put to wide use.
There is a 2008 learned paper by Yanigasawa and Mizoguchi that shows how Kameda introduced Japanese carpentry and the modular system into western design but all except the precis of their paper is in Japanese so I have no idea how they go about proving their point. They do tell us that Kameda was a master carpenter in Fukuoka.
Exhibition - Tokyo 1907. . [Special number of Fuzoku Gaho devoted to the 1907 Tokyo Industrial Exhibition]. Tokyo 1907. Small quarto publisher's illustrated wrapper (spine worn); four double page plates (two colour), one tinted full page plate, b/w photo illustrations. A bit used but a pretty good copy. English translations of the plate captions on typed slips are loosely inserted. Au$100
The Fuzoku Gaho (1889 - 1916) was Japan's first graphic magazine. I'd like to know who the artist was of some of these plates. They masterfully capture the eagerness for the new, the wonder, the distractions, the shared delights, and the weary resignation of some parents.
The 1907 exhibition was conceived as an international exhibition but this ambition fizzled due to lack of enthusiasm, if not nerve, on the part of officialdom. Nonetheless this was big stuff, expansive in its inclusion of technology, culture, the arts and popular entertainment - introducing not one but two ferris wheels to Tokyo. It did pretty good business, atttracting some six or seven million visitors.
Asai Chu. [Tosei Fuzoku Gojuban Utaawase]. Tokyo, Yoshikawa Hanschichi 1907 (Meiji 40). Two volumes 25x18cm publisher's wrapper with title labels; 52 full page colour woodcuts by Asai. An outstanding pair. Au$1500
Such a fresh and crisp copy of the original edition that I can't bring myself to flatten these out enough to photograph the interior. So the illustrations here, apart from the covers, are from another copy, almost as good, to give an idea of the remarkable charm and humour of Asai's observations of the modern Japanese seen in pairs.
Asai, elder and teacher of the school of western painting, fortunately never abandoned the tradition of satirical illustration. This was published just before his death. Each of these illustrations accompanies a poem on modern customs; the book's title calls this a poetry competition.
Asai Chu. [Tosei Fuzoku Gojuban Utaawase]. Tokyo, Yoshikawa Hanschichi 1907 (Meiji 40). Two volumes 25x18cm publisher's wrapper with title labels; 52 full page colour woodcuts by Asai. A couple of bits of stitching broken, still an outstanding pair: fresh, crisp, beautifully printed. Au$850
First edition of this captivating collection of portraits of couples, if only momentarily. Each of these illustrations accompanies a poem on modern customs; the book's title calls this a poetry competition.
Asai, elder and teacher of the school of western painting, fortunately never abandoned the tradition of satirical illustration - though there is more good natured but pointed humour here than harsh satire. This was published just before his death.
Otake Kokkan. [Shogaku Kyoka Sugoroku]. Tokyo, Shonen Sekei 1907 (Meiji 40). Colour broadside 78x54cm. Quite a nice copy. Au$385
School life for small boys and girls; this was the new year gift from the boys' magazine Shonen Sekai. Boys and girls learn to read but then their ways seem to part: boys learn about rats while girls do flowers, boys learn to count while girls sew, boys write while girls fold paper. Otake by 1907 was a well regarded, prize winning, Nihonga painter who was firm about maintaining Japanese tradition but like many such artists was a busy producer of prints and illustrator of magazines, books and advertisements.
Nakazawa Hiromitsu, Kobayashi Shokichi & Okano Sakae. [Toyo Mirai Sugoroku]. Tokyo, Hakubunkan 1907 (Meiji 40). Colour printed broadside, 55x78cm. Minor flaws and signs of use, some ink splodges on the back. Au$650
A view, or a panoply of views, of a future Asia. Some of these vignettes of what's to come are obvious enough - schoolgirls at rifle drill and sumo wrestlers in striped bathers - but a few seem fairly recondite to me. I'm not sure how much is optimistic, how much is dire warning and how much is wearily stoic.
Nakazawa, Kobayashi and Okano, still young, had been fellow students at the Tokyo School of Fine Arts, and of Kuroda Seiki, and collaborated on the five volume Nihon Meisho Shasei Kiko, issued over several years.
Nakazawa Hiromitsu, Kobayashi Shokichi & Okano Sakae. [Toyo Mirai Sugoroku]. Tokyo, Hakubunkan 1907 (Meiji 40). Colour printed broadside, 55x78cm. Edges nibbled, a small ink splodge, a bit browned; quite good. Au$425
A view, or a panoply of views, of a future Asia. Some of these vignettes of what's to come are obvious enough - schoolgirls at rifle drill and sumo wrestlers in striped bathers - but a few seem fairly recondite to me. I'm not sure how much is optimistic, how much is dire warning and how much is wearily stoic.
Nakazawa, Kobayashi and Okano, still young, had been fellow students at the Tokyo School of Fine Arts, and of Kuroda Seiki, and collaborated on the five volume Nihon Meisho Shasei Kiko, issued over several years.
Exhibition - Tokyo 1907 - [Tokyo Kangyo Hakurankai Zue - Fuzoku Gaho]. Tokyo, Fuzoku Gaho 1907. Five volumes 26x19cm, publisher's colour illustrated wrappers; a large folding colour view in the first issue, at least two double page colour illustrations in each of the others, monochrome plates and photo illustrations. Au$500
A set of the five special issues of the Fuzoku Gaho devoted to the 1907 Tokyo Industrial Exhibition. The Fuzoku Gaho (1889 - 1916) was Japan's first graphic magazine. I'd like to know who the artist was of some of these plates*. They masterfully capture the eagerness for the new, the wonder, the distractions, the shared delights, and the weary resignation of some parents.
The 1907 exhibition was conceived as an international exhibition but this ambition fizzled due to lack of enthusiasm, if not nerve, on the part of officialdom. Nonetheless this was big stuff, expansive in its inclusion of technology, culture, the arts and popular entertainment - introducing not one but two ferris wheels to Tokyo. It did pretty good business, atttracting some six or seven million visitors.
*A generous customer has told me that the coloured frontispieces and some other illustrations, where the signature can be read, are by Yamamoto Shoun, also known as Matsutani - which appears to me to be the signature on the admirable illustrations.
Exhibition - Tokyo 1907. The Tokyo Industrial Exhibition, an extra number of the 'Teikoku Gaho', an illustrated monthly magazine. Tokyo, Fuzanbo [1907]. Quarto publisher's colour illustrated wrapper (a bit used); profusely illustrated throughout, mostly photo illustrations, a few folding, two folding maps, some colour lithographs, including a folding plate of caricatures and an odd depiction of the 'patron goddis of industry'; interspersed sections of advertising on red paper. Au$300
A substantial and very useful round-up of the exhibition; there is a summary in English and the illustrations have English captions. The 1907 exhibition was conceived as an international exhibition but this ambition fizzled due to lack of enthusiasm, if not nerve, on the part of officialdom. Nonetheless this was big stuff, expansive in its inclusion of technology, culture, the arts and popular entertainment - introducing not one but two ferris wheels to Tokyo. And it did pretty good business, apparently atttracting some six or seven million visitors.
HADDON, Robert J. Australian Architecture. A technical manual .. Melbourne, Robertson [1908]. Octavo untrimmed in dark green morocco (spine now a dark brown) by Margaret Chapman, lettered in gilt on the spine and blocked in blind on the sides; [6],544pp, 94 plates (one colour). A very good copy. Au$2500
A special presentation copy bound in a credible (despite some typically clunky lettering) craft binding signed 'MC' on the rear dentelle - Margaret Chapman, one of the first professional craft binders in Australia; she established the Craftsman Bindery and won exhibition prizes in 1907 - with on heavy endpapers, a carefully calligraphed inscription from Haddon to Frank Templeman Mew "with the affectionate greetings of his one time pupil ... inscribed in Melbourne in the year 1909". and a mounted photograph of Haddon facing the caption "The author at work in the study at 'Anselm' Caulfield". Haddon served his articles with Mew in London from 1881.
Mew's architectural career was brief; born the second son in a family given to brewing for the eldest son and architecture for the rest, he was still young and unknown in the mid eighties when he was called back to brewing, so becoming a rich and successful businessman.
For generations this was the first true Australian architecture book. Before this we have some trade and technical literature, some government reports and scattered papers and, recently discovered, a pattern book printed but probably not published in Melbourne in 1885. So Mr Haddon is now moved down to second place. This is a matter of precedence rather than importance as no-one ever saw the pattern book. Despite Haddon's approach (a textbook rather than pattern book), his examples can easily be traced to his own projects - domestic, commercial, churches, hospitals and shearing sheds. His city office in this book, for example, is a close relative to his Fourth Victoria building in Collins Street, Melbourne.
His work was modern, very much Arts & Crafts (or Federation if you like) at this period and he argues for a specific response to local conditions and materials and demands a modern, honest use of materials. Not all his designs hark back to English antecedents; the colour plate here shows a city building owing a dramatic debt to Moorish Spain (and some fairytale castle) and his design for the Swinburne College building appears to be part Spanish mission and part Mesopotamian.
[Uenokoen Shimizu Do Saigo Nanshu Dozo no Zu] Tokyo, Tsunashima Kamekichi 1908 (Meiji 41). Colour woodcut 27x39cm. Rather good. Au$125
An almost sombre day in Ueno Park in comparison with the psychedelic colouring of cheap lithograph views of the time. Still, you can be sure that the photographer at work turned out less exciting views than this. The statue is of Saigo Takamori. Least said about him by me the better.
Ogawa Usen [also known as Soju Usen]. [Soju Manga]. Tokyo, Hidaka Yurindo 1908 (Meiji 41). 255x190mm publisher's printed wrapper (some wear, spine chipped); [6],136;[4],[8]pp; woodcut illustrations throughout, a few colour, most printed in sienna. Originally stapled, the staples have perished; a used but very decent copy in a modern chitsu. Au$750
First edition of Usen's first book; a facsimile was published in the seventies. A lively collection of pictures, seemingly naive at times but as Hillier said of a later book - Sangushu (1921) - "The childlike naivete of the original sketches is ... actually the acme of sophistication ... the artist is as elliptical as the poet." (Hillier; The Art of the Japanese Book).
Usen hadn't yet attained the fame that brought the quality of printing his later work has but he makes up for that here with humour and imagination. Usen studied western painting before starting his career as a newspaper and magazine illustrator and is among the best of the generation of artists born and educated with the Meiji, soaked in both the foreign and the nationalistic reaction to the foreign, and determined not to step backwards into regurgitating tradition nor become mimics of the west. Some of his late work seems refined to the point of kitsch to me but when sleek expensive art journals publish articles in English on the hitherto neglected anarchistic aims of Usen's early work we know that he has truly arrived.
OCLC finds no copy of this outside the National Diet Library.
Hikifuda. Tsumura Juntendo. - [Chujo Yu - Herupu]. [Tokyo? 1908-09]. Colour lithograph 265x375mm. Old vertical folds, stabholes in the right margin and tips clipped from the left corners indicating it was once part of an album. A pretty good copy. Au$225
Tsumura Juntendo - still in business - began selling herbal remedies in Tokyo in the 1890s and 'Help' - Tsumura's herbal wonder cure for women - went on the market in 1907. This handsome hikifuda - handbill or poster - includes a calendar for 1909.
BRADSHAW, Lewis. Modern Mansions. A solution of the housing, the servant, and the drink problems, by a rational, an evolutionary, and a scientific method of housing reform. Kettering, Northamptonshire Printing [1908]. Octavo publisher's illustrated wrapper (spine ends neatly repaired); 80pp, six plates (five folding). Au$500
Bradshaw has, with good judgment, seeded sensible British calm through his title - rational, evolutionary, scientific - but this is, for England, a radical little book. Bradshaw proposes housing along lines not just co-operative but communal - he goes so far as to use the term 'collective'. He diverges from the high density urban solutions and the Garden City ideals then predominant among pioneering town planners. Proposed here are short rows of villas or terrace houses - possibly built using Edison's prefabricated concrete system - radiating out from a central amenities hall, these in turn radiating out from a circular town centre of markets and shops.
There are some intriguing parallels here with Garnier's schemes, worked out at about the same time but not published for another decade - given we leave out the epic grandeur of Garnier.
CORELLI, Marie. The Devil's Motor. A Fantasy. London, Hodder & Stoughton [1910]. Quarto publisher's decorated red cloth blocked in gilt and black; 52 heavy leaves printed on one side, six mounted colour illustrations by Arthur Severn. Endpapers a touch discoloured, a bright copy in the remains of the dustwrapper, bump to the top edge toward the end. Still with a faint scent of smoke - a production gimmick. Au$200
An impassioned impeachment (try saying that five times quickly) of the automobile - symbol of all the destructive forces of greed and modern industry - written at full flight with all of Corelli's awkward grasp of the overwrought. The clever cover design is suggestive, at first glance, of Christmas - fitting for what is obviously a Christmas gift book - but the holly-like border is made up of bat-winged car wheels.
Hikifuda. ... ... [Takahashiya ... Taromaru ...]. n.p. [c1910?]. 26x38cm colour woodcut. Margins browned. Au$125
I don't know what Takahashiya sold, I'm sorry, but I can tell you that Taromaru is in Toyama and that this patriotic hikifuda celebrates the royal family who in turn celebrate Japan taking to the air. That's the crown prince, soon to be emperor Taisho and his family, presumably his oldest child, Hirohito.
These hikifuda - small posters or handbills - were usually produced with the text panel blank. The customer, usually a retailer, had their own details over printed, so the same image might sell fine silk or soy sauce.
Paper toys. A gathering of eleven Taisho period cheap and flimsy paper games and booklets. n.p. 1910s to 20s. Sizes range from 8x5cm to 17x11cm closed. Obviously never used. Au$400
These look very much like they were gifts that accompanied something else or were rewards for coupons or suchlike. Five, including the origami-like soldier, fold out to be 'board' games with playing pieces inside; two are cinema like thrillers on accordian leaves and the two smallest are puzzling envelopes containing blank sheets and what looks like talcum; finally are the two booklets, smaller illustrated in black and white, larger in colour, telling the story of the Tongue Cut Sparrow.
Hikifuda - fashion. . A small hikifuda - handbill - advertising fashion from Kawaki Shoten in Ogawamachi in Tokyo. Tokyo [c1910?]. Colour lithograph broadsheet 18x19cm. Illustration on one side, text in blue on the other. An old crease. Au$65
Small but chic. Is the young dandy wanting the stylish but undeniably bourgeois family to move on or is that merely a dandy's customary expression of disdain?
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