Candlestand and Book

Candlestand and Book is a [surimono](/glossary/surimono) print by Ryuryukyo Shinsai in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, dated to about 1813. The composition pairs a candlestand bearing a tall candle with a closed book set beside it, an image that compresses an entire scene of nighttime reading into two emblems. Shinsai, a leading designer within the Hokusai school after his early training under Tawaraya Sori, used the surimono format to make such concentrated still lifes for kyoka poetry clubs, whose verses on the sheet would have drawn out themes of study, contemplation, and the long winter or autumn evenings when one read by candle. The candlestand's lacquered or wooden structure is rendered with attention to its joinery and the weight of its base, while the book is shown with its binding cords visible, an unobtrusive detail that signals respect for its physical form. Surimono printers favored heavy [hosho](/glossary/hosho) paper, tonal grading, and embossing for this kind of subject, and impressions like the Metropolitan's preserve the delicate adjustments of value that give the lit candle its quiet luminescence. The absent reader is implied by the arrangement, a familiar device in Shinsai's still-life work that lets the viewer occupy the empty seat. As a Hokusai school surimono designer, Shinsai treated such ordinary fixtures of the desk as worthy of the same care as figures, an attitude consistent with the school's belief that observation of small things sustained the larger art.