Collection of prints

"Collection of prints" suggests a self-referential subject — a still life of stacked or arranged sheets, perhaps a portfolio, folio case, or table of pulled impressions. The composition may consist of a study of his own materials and outputs, the kind of reflexive subject that surfaces periodically in [sosaku-hanga](/glossary/sosaku-hanga) work as artists turn their attention to the apparatus of their practice: paper, blocks, brushes, the printed sheet itself. Sasajima carved and printed every block by hand without studio assistance, an Onchi Koshiro principle he held to for his entire career, and the print may register that material consciousness directly. The treatment likely retains his characteristic exposed knife marks, heavy [karazuri](/glossary/karazuri) embossing, and decisive contrast between inked area and unprinted [washi](/glossary/washi). The subject sits aside from his Buddhist architectural mainstay but shares the same sensibility — an attentiveness to surface, accumulation, and the physical evidence of the maker's hand on paper.