Iris No. 167

Iris No. 167 sits late in Sugiura Kazutoshi's iris cycle, a serial project that has become one of the defining bodies of work in postwar Japanese botanical printmaking. The print likely presents a single iris bloom, perhaps paired with a bud, set above the characteristic upright leaves of the species. As [kacho-e](/glossary/kacho-e), the work continues a centuries-old subject category in Japanese woodblock printing while resisting its more decorative tendencies; Sugiura tends to flatten the picture plane and treat the flower as a near-emblematic form. The mokuhanga technique here calls for separately carved blocks for each tonal area, with [bokashi](/glossary/bokashi) gradations along petal edges to register the fall from saturated indigo or violet into a paler heart. The serial numbering aligns Sugiura with international print practices of the same period — limited editions, recurring motifs, slight variation — while the subject ties him to the kacho-e lineage represented in the holdings of the Brooklyn Museum and MoMA.