Grape Leaves

The Japanese title 瑠璃 (ruri) denotes lapis lazuli, a saturated deep blue, indicating the leaves are tonally weighted toward dark blue-black aquatint rather than chlorophyll naturalism. Takeda likely renders the vine as a tangle of overlapping leaves, with etched line tracing the radiating venation and aquatint laying graded plate tone across each lobe. The chine-collé sheet beneath the plate adds a faint reflective ground that the title invites the viewer to read as the lapis the leaves are named for. A single climbing vine treated at small intaglio scale sits within her broader practice of close-attention nature studies — garlic bulbs, butterflies, pond surfaces — handled at the table rather than the easel. Editions of this period typically run to thirty impressions. Grape leaves are not a traditional Japanese intaglio motif, and Takeda's decision to spend a copperplate on them reflects the personal, non-canonical subject choices she has pursued since her 1989 graduation from Tokyo University of the Arts and her completion of the Geidai graduate program two years later.