Plum Branch

Plum Branch, dating to the late eighteenth century, is a [surimono](/glossary/surimono) color woodblock print held by the Art Institute of Chicago. Surimono - literally "printed thing" - were privately commissioned prints, typically produced for poetry circles and distributed among members on auspicious occasions, often New Year. They used the most luxurious printing techniques available: thick paper, lavish use of metallic pigments, gauffrage (blind embossing), and the most refined color work, and they almost always combined an image with one or more kyoka (comic-poetry) inscriptions. The plum branch was a perennial New Year subject, evoking the season's first flowering, perseverance through winter, and aristocratic literary association. Shigemasa's surimono production reflects his integration into the kyoka poetry circles of late-eighteenth-century Edo and his standing as a calligrapher and literary man as much as a popular print designer. The surimono format, smaller and less easily commercial than [oban](/glossary/oban) prints, has often suffered greater attrition over the centuries, making the Art Institute of Chicago's preservation of this example particularly valuable for the study of Shigemasa's private-commission work.