Iris No 109 — 花菖蒲 No 109

The one hundred ninth iris in Sugiura Kazutoshi's series shows the hana-shōbu with the authority that comes from sustained practice — not simply repeating established solutions but finding, in each new composition, something previously unseen in the familiar subject. The layered printing process Sugiura developed gives these late-series works their characteristic luminosity: pigment layers applied in sequence create an internal light within the composition that cannot be reduced to any single pass of ink. Works from this range of the series appear regularly in international auction records.