Picture Book of New Patterns for Various Trades (Shoshoku ehon shin hinagata)

Picture Book of New Patterns for Various Trades (Shoshoku ehon shin hinagata), published in 1836, is one of Katsushika Hokusai's contributions to the rich tradition of design and pattern manuals that supported the urban craft economy of late Edo Japan. The volume gathers ornamental designs, motifs and compositional schemes intended to assist craftsmen working in lacquer, textile, metalwork, ceramics and architectural decoration. Hokusai's pages demonstrate the encyclopedic curiosity that also drove the much larger Hokusai Manga: birds, flowers, geometric tilings, mythological scenes and abstract calligraphic forms appear side by side. As a publication, the book belongs to the broader world of Edo ukiyo-e printing, sharing carvers, papermakers and publishers with the single-sheet landscape series produced in the same decade. Although Shoshoku ehon shin hinagata is not strictly a ukiyo-e print collection, its woodblock production and popular distribution place it within that artistic continuum. The Victoria and Albert Museum in London preserves a copy, and the holdings of the museum's craft and design collections allow scholars to study how Hokusai's patterns were taken up by later craftsmen. The book also stands as evidence of Hokusai's economic intelligence: the production of practical manuals offered a steadier revenue stream than the speculative single-sheet print market and demonstrated his ability to address professional readerships across the artisanal trades of nineteenth-century Japan.