Noriko Konno

Noriko Konno (今野 規子) is a contemporary Japanese intaglio printmaker whose work combines drypoint and engraving with applied gold leaf to produce small to mid-format copper-plate prints with a distinctive metallic-jeweled 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 conventional Western copperplate engraving and traditional Japanese gold-leaf decorative painting (kinpaku-e).

Konno's working method is described in her own catalog statements as intuitive: rather than predetermining the composition before scoring the plate, she allows the image to develop organically as she carves, responding to natural sounds and light during the process. The result is a body of work in which the line and the gold-leaf application register as immediate physical responses to environmental conditions rather than as the execution of a pre-drawn composition. The 2024 work Moon in Natural Settings (drypoint, engraving, and gold leaf) was selected as the cover image for the catalog of the 68th CWAJ Print Show in Tokyo — one of the most significant Japanese contemporary print honors a working printmaker can receive.

The CWAJ Print Show, organized annually by the College Women's Association of Japan since 1956, is the central showcase for Japanese contemporary printmaking, and the catalog cover selection from among hundreds of submitted works represents a peer recognition of artistic excellence within the field. Konno's selection in 2024 confirms her standing as one of the more accomplished mid-career intaglio voices.

Detailed biographical information about Konno (year of birth, education, residence, awards) is not consistently published in English-language sources. The artist maintains a CWAJ Gallery profile and exhibits regularly through the Japanese intaglio circuit. Her gold-leaf-on-engraving technique places her in a small group of Japanese printmakers who have integrated traditional decorative-art materials (gold leaf, gold pigment, gampi paper) into Western intaglio practice — a small but distinctive thread within the Japanese contemporary intaglio scene.

Konno is featured in the educational materials of the CWAJ 68th Print Show A Brief Guide to Printmaking Techniques (2025) as a representative example of combined drypoint, engraving, and gold-leaf practice, alongside more conventional examples of pure etching, mezzotint, and aquatint. Her continued representation in the CWAJ Print Show in successive years suggests sustained productive practice through the early 2020s.

Within the broader Japanese contemporary print field Konno occupies a quiet but distinctive position: her work does not pursue the conceptual experimentation of figures like Nao Osada or Saori Miyake but instead extends the tradition of refined, technique-focused intaglio with a single distinctive material innovation (gold leaf) added to the standard engraving vocabulary. This kind of disciplined technical commitment, sustained over years of CWAJ-circuit exhibition, is one of the defining patterns of contemporary Japanese print practice outside the major academic teaching institutions.