Shasei sōka moyō (Patterns of Flowers and Grasses from Life)
写生草花模様
by Furuya Kōrin
- Date:
- 1907
- Medium:
- Woodblock printed book in two volumes; ink and color with metallic pigments on paper
- Source:
- Harvard Art Museums
写生草花模様
by Furuya Kōrin
Shasei sōka moyō (Patterns of Flowers and Grasses Drawn from Life) is a two-volume woodblock-printed design album (zuanchō) issued in Kyoto in 1907 by the publisher Yamada Unsōdō, designed by Furuya Kōrin (1875-1910). The Harvard Art Museums copy (object 2020.20) was acquired in 2020 from the Boston Book Company and is one of the most important institutional copies of the album outside Japan. The set comprises some fifty plates of floral and grass motifs treated in Furuya's signature late-Meiji neo-Rinpa idiom: stylized flowers, autumn grasses, vines, and seasonal plants distilled from naturalistic observation (shasei) into flat, repeating ornamental patterns suitable for textile, lacquer, and metalwork application. The printing makes lavish use of metallic and mineral pigments — silver, gold, copper, and powdered shell white — alongside many-colour impressions and embossed ([karazuri](/glossary/karazuri)) backgrounds, exploiting the full technical apparatus that Kyoto colour woodblock printing had developed by the late Meiji period. The album is a definitive example of the zuanchō genre that Furuya and Unsōdō reshaped between 1903 and 1910, in which the working-trade sample book was elevated into an autonomous decorative-art object collected by designers, kimono manufacturers, and the international audience for Japanese design.
縞々
1904
Color woodblock-printed design album (zuanchō); ink and color on paper
古代陳設十六図
1903
Woodblock printed book (orihon, accordion-style binding), ink on paper
光琳模様
1907
Two-volume orihon (concertina-binding) album; color woodblock on paper
夕暮の海辺
1910
Pair of folding screens; ink and color on paper
Shasei sōka moyō (Patterns of Flowers and Grasses from Life) (写生草花模様) was created by Furuya Kōrin (古谷紅麟) in 1907.
Shasei sōka moyō (Patterns of Flowers and Grasses from Life) depicts birds & flowers.
