Still-life with hand-cut vase

Still-life with hand-cut vase presents a tabletop arrangement organized around a faceted glass vessel, the cut surfaces of which provided Kitaoka a pretext for exploring the registration challenges of overlapping color planes. Still lifes were uncommon in classical [ukiyo-e](/glossary/ukiyo-e) but became central to the [sosaku-hanga](/glossary/sosaku-hanga) generation, who borrowed the genre from European modernism as a vehicle for formal experimentation. The artist would have carved separate blocks for each tonal facet of the vase, allowing the printed paper to register the geometric play of light through cut glass without resorting to gradient inking. Surrounding objects — likely flowers, a cloth, or fruit — provide the contrasting organic forms against which the vase's hard angles assert themselves. The work sits within the postwar shift in Kitaoka's practice from figurative documentation toward a more measured engagement with composition itself, evident in the abstract cityscapes and pure landscapes he pursued in the same period. The hand-cut vessel functions as both subject and pretext for the woodblock's particular ability to articulate flat areas of color.