The Home Coming

This 1905 color woodcut on Japan paper preserves a single color impression from the yellow block used in printing "The Home Coming." In traditional Japanese woodblock printing, the final image is built up through successive impressions from multiple carved blocks, each carrying a different color. This impression isolates one layer of that process, revealing the contribution of the yellow block to the overall composition. Such single-block impressions are valuable for understanding the printmaker's working method — which areas receive which colors, how colors overlap and interact, how the carver distributes visual weight across separate blocks. For Lum, who cut her own blocks, this impression documents her personal decisions about color separation and layering strategy.