Sample intaglio (winged figure / animal series)

This sheet belongs to a sequence of figural intaglios in which Yanagisawa pairs human or quasi-human bodies with animal attributes — wings, horns, or fur. Working from a copper plate prepared with both etched line and mezzotint rocker, she builds form out of velvety dark fields rather than contour, so the winged figure emerges from a graduated tonal envelope rather than being drawn against it. Spit-bite and selective drypoint passages, characteristic of her plate work, account for the softer atmospheric areas and the burred accents at edges. The print is then hand-dyed on [gampi](/glossary/gampi) paper, a thin lustrous Japanese support that holds intaglio ink without bleeding while accepting brushed pigment in muted, slightly translucent washes. The motif sits within Yanagisawa's broader iconographic vocabulary of hybrid and emblematic creatures — material she developed after her studies under Tetsurō Komai at Tokyo Geidai, extending the postwar Japanese etching idiom away from Komai's tighter linearity toward a quieter, more symbolic register.