
Wind bell
by Taki Shusui
- Medium:
- Mokuhanga (Japanese woodblock)
- Image courtesy of
- Saru Gallery
Description
A second print sharing the wind bell subject, again treating the furin that conventionally signals summer in Japanese seasonal imagery. Pairs of prints with identical titles in dealer records often correspond either to alternate states of a single design—where the publisher issued a variant palette, paper stock, or trimmed margin—or to distinct compositions within a small thematic group treating the same motif from different angles. Without a series inscription or numbering in the recorded data, the two versions cannot be definitively related. The technical demands of the subject are modest in block count but exacting in registration: the curve of the glass, the thin line of the suspending cord, and the calligraphic strokes on the [tanzaku](/glossary/tanzaku) strip all rely on accurate [kento](/glossary/kento) alignment of a few finely cut blocks. Within twentieth-century printmaking, the furin appears regularly in [shin-hanga](/glossary/shin-hanga) still-life and in the more domestic registers of [sosaku-hanga](/glossary/sosaku-hanga), where it reads as an emblem of warm-weather quiet rather than as a narrative element.



