Cutting and Sewing (Tachinui), from the series "Collection of of Fashionable Accomplishments (Furyu shogei zukushi)"

From Koryusai's series Furyu shogei zukushi (Collection of Fashionable Accomplishments), held by the Art Institute of Chicago and dated to about 1770 to 1772, this chuban print represents Tachinui (Cutting and Sewing), depicting a young woman engaged in the cutting and sewing of cloth for a kimono. The shogei (accomplishments) tradition catalogued the polite arts and household skills that a fashionable Edo woman was expected to master, from poetry and music to needlework and tea, and Koryusai's series transposes that conventional list into the bijin-ga idiom. The scene of cutting and sewing is observed with particular attention to the working posture, the laid-out fabric, and the implements of the trade, anchoring the bijin in a precisely realized domestic interior. The series exemplifies Koryusai's broad interest in the everyday accomplishments of Edo women as legitimate subjects for fashion-system bijin-ga.