Mokuhanga Byoubu (Folding Screen)

Mokuhanga Byoubu adapts a classical Japanese decorative format — the byoubu, or folding screen — to contemporary printmaking practice. Traditional byoubu were painted on paper or silk mounted over wooden frames, used to divide interior space, block drafts, and display seasonal imagery in aristocratic and merchant households. Jesse's four-panel version translates this format into mokuhanga on [washi](/glossary/washi), bringing the reproducibility of woodblock printing to a form historically associated with unique paintings. The four-panel structure creates a panoramic field that can be viewed as a continuous horizontal composition or partially folded into configurations that bring certain panels forward and recede others. Figures and interior elements occupy the composition, suggesting a domestic or contemplative scene appropriate to the screen's traditional function as interior furnishing. Printing on washi maintains the material connection to Japanese decorative tradition while the mokuhanga technique — water-based pigments, hand-pressed through a [baren](/glossary/baren) — gives the surface a softness and luminosity suited to the screen's large format.