Inkstone in a Horseshoe Shape (Bateiseki), from the series A Selection of Horses (Uma zukushi)

Inkstone in a Horseshoe Shape (Bateiseki), produced around 1822, is a design from Katsushika Hokusai's series A Selection of Horses (Uma zukushi), an inventive set of small-format prints that play on equine imagery across a range of cultural and material registers. The print depicts an inkstone carved in the shape of a horseshoe, a delicacy of literati craft that combines the practical world of the scholar with allusion to the prized animal of the warrior class. Hokusai isolates the inkstone against a tonal ground, allowing the carved curvature and incised pattern of the stone to dominate the composition. As a ukiyo-e print, the work demonstrates Hokusai's investment in surimono and small-format printing of the 1820s, where complex symbolism, refined printing techniques and literary verse were combined for private connoisseur audiences. The Harvard Art Museums preserve an impression of the design, and their wider holdings of Edo ukiyo-e surimono support comparative study of the series and its peers. The Uma zukushi project illustrates the breadth of Hokusai's career beyond the better-known landscape series, demonstrating his fluency in the literary, ornamental and material cultures of late Edo. The inkstone design in particular speaks to the way Edo ukiyo-e could record the small precious objects of daily intellectual life while gesturing simultaneously toward the broader symbolic vocabulary of horses, warriors and scholars.