Collection of Japanese Woodblock Prints (Ori Ehon) (Ukiyo-E) by Various Artists

Hardcover. Very Good. Red decorative cloth over boards, royal folio (13-7/8 x 9-3/4 inches [35.3 x 24.7 cm]) containing well over 100 feet (54 feet each side) of mid 19th to early 20th century Japanese prints with 40 singles, 3 diptychs, and 28 triptychs in an ORI EHON (ORI - folding; E - picture; HON - book). With a good selection of different artists such as Yoshitoshi - Moonlight on the Ruin and a variety of Kabuki actors also being well represented along with some early Manga. Print colors are bright and unfaded with most showing good register, occasional offsetting and minor soil, many of the prints have had their margins trimmed and a few prints noted with tiny amount of insect damage under magnification. Please inquire for a complete set of photos and/or a detailed description of individual prints. "ehon - or 'picture books,' in Japanese. ... are one of the true glories of Japanese art but are little known today, even in Japan, because of their great rarity ... their breathtaking exuberance, sophisticated artistry, sensuality, unparalleled originality, intellectual gravity, playful spirit, and lightness of touch. Ehon are part of an incomparable 1,230-year-old Japanese tradition. Created by artists and craftsmen, most ehon also feature essays, poems, or other texts written in beautiful, distinctive calligraphy. They are by nature collaborations: visual artists, calligraphers, writers, and designers join forces with papermakers, binders, block cutters, and printers. The books they create are strikingly beautiful, highly charged microcosms of deep feeling, sharp intensity, and extraordinary intelligence.The earliest ehon were made as religious offerings or talismans, but the great flowering of ehon began in the early modern period (1600-1868) and has continued, with new media and new styles and subjects, to the present." Keyes, Roger S. EHON: THE ARTIST AND THE BOOK IN JAPAN; ref. Hillier, Jack, THE ART OF THE JAPANESE BOOK.