Designer: Noel Nouet | Publisher: Doi Hanga | Date: 1936

Paper size: 39.5cm by 27.5cm | Enlargement | Currency: $ / £ / €

Price: $ 300.00£ 240.00€ 279.00 [Reprinting]

Description: This is one from a group of prints designed by Noel Nouet, a Frenchman living in Tokyo in the pre-war period. The Doi publishing house issued more than two dozen of his pen sketches, transforming them into shin hanga style woodblock prints by carving his lines into woodblocks and adding colours. The pre-war issues are now extremely rare, and almost never seen in the market.

In the post-war period, the Doi people selected 'about 12' (their description) of the designs for re-printing from the original block sets, and this work was done for them by Itō, and then Kenji Seki (both now gone). The prints we have here at Mokuhankan are what is left from that stock.

In recent years, there has been much speculation about whether or not the key blocks of the Nouet prints were actually carved in cherry, or done with metal plates, but that has now been resolved by inspection of the block sets. Nouet's lines - nothing at all like traditional brush strokes - were all cut into hard cherry, in the traditional way.

There is roughness in the margin where the printer has tried to clean up some of the left-over pigment near the registration marks.