Anton Hart

Reed's portrait of Anton Hart belongs to a series of mokuhanga likenesses of fellow practitioners, exhibited in connection with the 2021 International Mokuhanga Conference in Nara. The print depicts the subject as a single-name title implies—a focused likeness rather than a narrative composition—and is built up through the registration of multiple carved blocks, each carrying a tonal value or compositional passage. Hand-pulled with a [baren](/glossary/baren) on dampened washi using water-based pigments, the impression embeds rather than coats the paper, giving the surface a matte, absorbed quality distinct from oil-based relief prints. The IMC's 2021 theme of sumi would have foregrounded black ink as the primary tonal register, with [bokashi](/glossary/bokashi) gradations carrying modulation across the sitter's features. Across the series, Reed engages with mokuhanga's capacity to translate contemporary likeness into a medium historically aligned with [bijin-ga](/glossary/bijin-ga), [yakusha-e](/glossary/yakusha-e), and [meisho-e](/glossary/meisho-e)—genres rooted in the Edo period yet still active within the international community of practitioners that the IMC convenes.