A Gourd Flask, a Cup, a Writing Box, and a Book for Rokurokusai

A Gourd Flask, a Cup, a Writing Box, and a Book for Rokurokusai is a surimono by Keisai Eisen, dated by the Art Institute of Chicago to 1801. As with the rest of the Rokurokusai set, the print was commissioned to celebrate a poet's sixty-sixth birthday — an age laden with auspicious associations in Edo culture — and arranged around objects that condense a lifetime of cultivated leisure into a single composition. The gourd flask and small cup invoke sake and the literati's love of long conversations over wine; the writing box (suzuribako) and bound volume gesture toward the kyoka and haikai poetry circles whose members commissioned and exchanged these deluxe prints. Eisen lays the objects out as if on a low writing desk seen from a slightly elevated angle, allowing each item to read clearly while their overlapping silhouettes establish a casual intimacy. Color is kept low-key, with metallic pigments, embossed lacquer surfaces, and karazuri blind-printing reserved for the textures of gourd, lacquer, and paper — luxuries typical of surimono production but rarely afforded in the commercial Edo ukiyo-e market. Across the upper field, the kyoka inscriptions thread between the objects, anchoring the image in the wordplay of the celebrant's coterie. Although Eisen's later fame rests on his bijin-ga — assertive portraits of fashionable women — surimono like this remind viewers that he was equally fluent in the emblematic still life that the genre demanded. Held in the Art Institute of Chicago, the sheet stands as a quietly handsome example of how Edo's poetry clubs, designers, and printers combined to mark a private birthday with public craft.