Edo prints
| Publisher: | Takejirō Hasegawa (1853-1938) | |||||
| Title: | Sword & Blossom Poems: first album | |||||
| Size: | 18.0 x 12.5 cm | |||||
| Photography: | Jacques Commandeur |
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This is the first album in the Sword & Blossom Poems three-volume set. As the colophon in the album indicates, this is the second edition printed in Meiji 42, the second month, the first day (i.e., February the 1st, 1909):
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The cover of this album is a crepe woodblock print fastened onto a padded board. Its contents and number of printings can all be seen here. All the text in these three albums was carved and printed simultaneously with the images. Moreover, the font used for all this text was specifically designed by publisher Hasegawa, and is now therefore known as “the Hasegawa font”. A digitized version of the font created in Summer 2019 by Markku Mujunen can be obtained from his website here.
The 3-volume set that I was able to obtain came with a blue wrap-around case with ivory clasps:
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The first poem in this album is called Snow:
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The image for this poem was based on Utagawa Hiroshige’s Ochanomizu print and used by David Bull for the carving and printing of the last print in his fourth Surimono album.
The image for the twelfth poem in this album:
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was clearly inspired by Katshuchika Hokusai’s famous Mount Fuji in clear weather print.
Provenance: The Baxley Stamps website