Shasei sōka moyō (Patterns of Flowers and Grasses from Life), Volume 1 (Jō)

Volume one (Jō, 上) of Shasei sōka moyō (Patterns of Flowers and Grasses Drawn from Life) is the first of two woodblock-printed design albums issued in Kyoto in 1907 by the publisher Yamada Unsōdō, designed by Furuya Kōrin (1875-1910). The Rijksmuseum's copy (RP-P-2005-557A) was acquired by the museum as part of its programme of collecting Meiji design albums and is digitized through Wikimedia Commons. The volume gathers floral and grass motifs treated in Furuya's late-Meiji Kyoto manner — a neo-Rinpa idiom in which naturalistic observation (shasei) is distilled into flat, repeating decorative patterns suitable for textile, lacquer, and metalwork application. The printing combines many-colour impressions with metallic and mineral pigments and with embossed (karazuri) backgrounds, exploiting the full technical apparatus that Kyoto colour woodblock printing had perfected by the early 1900s. Like the other zuanchō issued under Yamada Naosaburō, the album sat at the intersection of working-trade utility and connoisseurial collecting: it functioned as a pattern library for the Nishijin kimono houses and Kyoto lacquer ateliers, while also entering libraries and museum collections from Amsterdam to Boston as a free-standing decorative-art object.