Evening Snow - Eight Views of Cats (夜雪 猫八景)

Designer: Randall Hall | Carver: David Bull | Printer: Tsutomu Mitamura

Paper size: 14cm by 21cm | Enlargement | Shipping Code: [M] ? ( Change currency: $ / £ / € )

Price: $ 80.00£ 66.00€ 74.00

   

Description: About the series: This is the first publication in what is intended to become a set of woodblock prints that follow the traditional concept of creating images in groups of eight. The practice originated in China back in the 12th century - based on landscape painting - and migrated to Japan some hundreds of years later. In the Edo-era, when woodblock printmaking began to flourish, the idea took off and a great many sets of such prints were created, no longer just landscape, but in a much wider variety of genres: historical episodes, kabuki actors, beautiful women … anything was fair game.

In the summer of 2019, we at Mokuhankan decided to pick up on this old idea, and proposed our own set - 8 Views of Cats. We publicized the idea through our website and videos, and put out a call for images to be submitted for consideration. The process is still going on, and you can learn more about it on its website.

About this print: Although the overall theme of any given 'Eight Views' set can vary, one of the 'rules' of the genre is that the eight individual designs in any set must follow a prescribed set of 'sub-themes': Evening Snow, Night Rain, Autumn Moon, Evening Bell, Returning Sails, Descending Geese, Evening Glow, and Clearing Weather. This print of course represents the Evening Snow theme.

It was designed for us by Randall Hall, a tattooist in North Carolina, USA. who was an early respondent to our request for images. If you know nothing about ukiyo-e history, this image will look perfectly attractive - a pair of cats sleeping in the snow - but if you are familiar with one of Utagawa Hiroshige's most iconic designs, then you will have given a gasp of pleasure when you saw this one!

Our reaction here was simply, "Why didn’t we think of that!" Well, Randall did, and this is the result. I doubt that he ever expected that his career resumé would come to include "Traditional woodblock print designer", but now it does!rn

   

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