Surimono with Nanten Berries

Dated 1853 and held in the British Museum (1980,1022,0.16), this [surimono](/glossary/surimono) with nanten berries represents Shiokawa Bunrin's contribution to the elite tradition of privately commissioned, lavishly produced woodblock prints that flourished in mid-nineteenth-century Kyoto. The nanten (heavenly bamboo, Nandina domestica), an evergreen shrub whose bright red berries persist through winter and into the New Year season, was an auspicious subject associated with year-end and New Year celebrations and a recurring motif in surimono designed for the season.

Surimono were privately commissioned, deluxe woodblock prints produced for kyōka poetry circles and other private patrons, characterized by the use of expensive pigments, lavish ground techniques (including metallic powders, blind embossing, and gauffrage), and small editions. They typically combined image and inscribed verse, with the image carrying the seasonal or thematic motif and the inscribed kyōka providing the literary frame. Bunrin's design, signed and sealed, applies the Shijō painter's sensitivity to natural form to the small surimono format, demonstrating the way Kyoto painters of his generation could move between the formats of painted scroll and printed sheet without compromising the school's pictorial values.