Iris No. 161 - 花菖蒲 161

The one hundred sixty-first iris in Sugiura Kazutoshi's numbered series is among the final works in a project of extraordinary sustained focus. The hana-shōbu at this late stage carries the weight of all its predecessors — each compositional decision made against a background of more than one hundred and sixty previous attempts at the same subject. The layered printmaking technique at this point operates at its highest refinement: woodblock carving, silkscreen overprinting, and gold-leaf application integrated into a unified process whose results show no visible seams between the different technical contributions. Late entries like this are often considered among the most accomplished in the series.