Hokkei Sketches (Hokkei manga), vol. 1

The first volume of Hokkei manga, or "Hokkei Sketches," is Totoya Hokkei's own contribution to the late Edo fashion for printed pattern and study books. The format — a loose anthology of figural studies, animals, plants, landscape elements, and decorative motifs — descends directly from his teacher Katsushika Hokusai's enormously influential Hokusai manga, the first volume of which had appeared in 1814. As one of the senior pupils of the Hokusai school, Hokkei was well positioned to develop his own album in a similar idiom, and the resulting book gives a candid view of his practice as a designer: the kinds of figures, gestures, and decorative arrangements he kept ready for surimono and other commissions. Although they were marketed as sketchbooks, manga volumes of this period were carefully designed and woodblock-printed in monochrome or limited color, intended to circulate as instruction for amateur painters and pattern sources for craftsmen. The Victoria and Albert Museum holds this first volume of Hokkei manga, and it sits naturally alongside the museum's holdings of his Edo kyoka-e surimono, where many of the same motifs recur in more elaborate, polychrome form. The book is important documentation of how the Hokusai school transmitted a shared visual vocabulary across generations of designers. Image courtesy of the Victoria and Albert Museum.