Cooper

"Cooper" (Okeya) is a color woodblock print from around 1940 by Wada Sanzo depicting a maker of wooden buckets and barrels. The cooper's craft was essential in premodern Japan, where wooden vessels served for storing rice, fermenting miso and soy sauce, bathing, and carrying water. The okeya shaped thin planks of cypress or cedar into watertight containers bound by bamboo hoops, a process requiring precise measurement and intimate knowledge of wood grain behavior. Wada captures the artisan amid the tools and materials of the trade, surrounded by shavings and finished or in-progress vessels. By the time Wada produced this print around 1940, plastic and metal containers were beginning to replace wooden ones, making the cooper's trade increasingly rare. The print serves as both artistic work and ethnographic document, preserving the image of a craftsman whose skills were already fading from daily life.