1965 Autumn Catalog

Maki Haku's 1965 Autumn Catalog is an earlier entry in the Red Lantern Shop series of seasonal dealer catalogs that featured his work on their covers, documented through the Japanese Art Open Database and surfaced via [ukiyo-e](/glossary/ukiyo-e).org. The Red Lantern Shop, based in Tokyo, played a pivotal role in introducing [sosaku-hanga](/glossary/sosaku-hanga) artists to American collectors during the postwar boom in interest in Japanese contemporary prints, and its catalogs functioned as both sales tools and aesthetic statements. For Maki Haku, who had begun exhibiting in earnest in the late 1950s, the mid-1960s were a period of consolidation: he refined the technique that would define his mature work, embedding raised Chinese characters into thick, textured grounds built up with cement, sand, and pigment before printing. The result is a body of abstract kanji prints in which the character functions less as a legible word than as a primal mark, a sculptural form, or a meditation object. The 1965 catalog cover sits at the threshold of that mature phase and reflects Maki Haku's interest in stripping calligraphic gesture to its essence. Born in 1924 as Maejima Tadaaki, the artist worked outside the formal academy and shared the sosaku-hanga commitment to the print as autonomous creative expression rather than reproductive craft. Source: ukiyo-e.org (Japanese Art Open Database), Red Lantern Shop catalog image.