Maker of Sword Fittings at his Workbench

From an album of surimono in the Art Institute of Chicago, Maker of Sword Fittings at his Workbench depicts a craftsman bent over his work - a specialist in tsuba, fuchi-kashira, and other small metal fittings that decorated samurai swords - rendered with the close observational care that surimono allowed. The subject is unusual: most ukiyo-e treats craftspeople only obliquely, as background figures in city views or busy street scenes, but the surimono format, with its small private audience of connoisseurs, permitted occasional excursions into the trades. Shunman positions the maker with his hammer, chisels, and partially completed fittings spread before him on the workbench, his concentration absolute, the image of the artisan's focus aligning naturally with the kyoka aesthetic of attention and craft. The detail in the tools and fittings is exact enough to suggest that Shunman, or whoever commissioned the print, had specific firsthand knowledge of the craft. The 1790s dating places the print at the beginning of Shunman's intensive surimono period, when poetry circles were increasingly turning to him for commissions and he was developing the visual vocabulary that would define his late career. As a page from an album, the print would have been collected with other surimono on related themes - probably the trades and crafts of Edo - and bound for private circulation among the members of a kyoka group. It is preserved in the Art Institute of Chicago's surimono holdings.