Figure-Prints of Japan

Sydney, Australia: Beacon Press, 1948. Folio. 53pp. One of forty deluxe copies, signed by the author. A lovely production, illustrated with thirty-six color plates. The plates are genuine prints: beautifully made modern reproductions of the originals, done in Japan. The text traces the rise and fall of the Ukiyo-ye school of Japanese wood-engraving, from its origins with the artist Moronobu in the seventeenth century, to its decline under Western influences in the nineteenth century. Ukiyo-e is translated as "pictures of the floating world," and prints of this genre depict the carefree pleasures of life: a world of entertainment and beauty, beyond mundane, everyday concerns. Ukiyo-ye challenged the traditional aristocratic and courtly schools of painting, and the plates depict people of the lower classes, including actors and courtesans, the finely-dressed beauties of the city, and tea-house waitresses. Artists of this school featured in Barnett's work include Utamaro, Shunsho, Harunobu, and Kiyonaga. Sumptuously bound in silk brocade, backed in gilt-ruled vellum. The endpapers bear prints of a woman carrying an umbrella, surrounded by borders of red maple leaves. A few very faint spots of offsetting from the plates, else a very fine copy. With the armorial bookplate of Bernard Gore Brett and a small, unobtrusive bookseller's label to front paste-down. An enchanting introduction to the art form.