Biography
Noriko Konno (今野 規子) is a contemporary Japanese intaglio printmaker whose work combines drypoint and engraving with applied gold leaf to produce copper-plate prints with a distinctive metallic, jewel-like surface. The combination of techniques — incised line into copper, intaglio inking, and added gold leaf as the final image layer — is unusual within contemporary Japanese intaglio practice and gives her sheets a quality that lies between Western copperplate engraving and the traditional Japanese use of gold leaf in decorative art (kinpaku).
Konno describes her working method as intuitive: rather than preparing a detailed sketch and predetermining the composition, she carves the plate spontaneously, letting the image form as she works and responding to the natural sounds and light around her. The result is a body of work in which the incised line and the gold-leaf application register as immediate physical responses to environmental conditions rather than the execution of a pre-drawn design. Her 2024 work 'Moon in natural settings' (drypoint, engraving, and gold leaf) was selected as the cover image for the catalogue of the 68th CWAJ Print Show.
The CWAJ Print Show, organized by the College Women's Association of Japan and first held in 1956, is a highly respected annual exhibition and sale of contemporary Japanese prints, and the selection of a work for the catalogue cover from among the many submitted represents a meaningful peer recognition within the field.
Detailed biographical information about Konno — year of birth, education, residence, and awards — is not consistently published in English-language sources. The artist maintains a CWAJ Gallery profile and exhibits through the Japanese intaglio circuit. Her gold-leaf-on-engraving technique places her among a small group of Japanese printmakers who have integrated traditional decorative-art materials, such as gold leaf, into Western intaglio practice — a distinctive thread within the contemporary Japanese intaglio scene.
Konno's technique is also discussed in the CWAJ 68th Print Show's 2025 guided-tour educational materials, which present her combination of drypoint, engraving, and gold leaf as an example of the range of methods represented in the show.
Within the broader Japanese contemporary print field, Konno occupies a quiet but distinctive position: rather than pursuing overt conceptual experimentation, her work extends the tradition of refined, technique-focused intaglio with a single distinctive material innovation — the addition of gold leaf to the standard engraving vocabulary. This kind of disciplined technical commitment is one of the recurring patterns of contemporary Japanese print practice outside the major academic teaching institutions.
Key Facts
- Nationality
- 🇯🇵Japan
- Movement
- Contemporary Mokuhanga
- Works Indexed
- 1
Frequently Asked Questions
Noriko Konno (今野 規子) is a contemporary Japanese intaglio printmaker whose work combines drypoint and engraving with applied gold leaf to produce copper-plate prints with a distinctive metallic, jewel-like surface. The combination of techniques — incised line into copper, intaglio inking, and added gold leaf as the final image layer — is unusual within contemporary Japanese intaglio practice and gives her sheets a quality that lies between Western copperplate engraving and the traditional Japanese use of gold leaf in decorative art (kinpaku).
Noriko Konno's work was shaped by the Contemporary Mokuhanga tradition in Japanese woodblock printmaking. Contemporary Mokuhanga: Contemporary mokuhanga (literally "wood-block print") encompasses artists working from approximately 1970 to the present who continue or reinvent traditional Japanese woodblock printing techniques.
Noriko Konno's prints frequently feature moonlight, nature.