Bookcase with Writing Utensils, Books, and Potted Adonis

Bookcase with Writing Utensils, Books, and Potted Adonis, a surimono of about 1820 by Yashima Gakutei in the Art Institute of Chicago, belongs to the still-life or interior-objects strand of kyoka-e. Surimono were privately commissioned woodblock prints issued by poetry circles, and one of the genre's recurring pleasures was the depiction of carefully arranged scholarly accessories: a bookcase stacked with bound volumes, a brush and inkstone, a small flowering plant in a pot. In this image Gakutei arranges those elements around a potted adonis, the early-spring flower that announced the New Year in the literary calendar, so the print functions as a poetic still life keyed to a particular season. As a member of the Hokusai school under Katsushika Hokusai, Gakutei was steeped in the school's interest in objects observed closely and rendered with crisp design. Here he uses a measured palette of greens, yellows, and accents of red, combined with deluxe surimono techniques such as karazuri embossing of book covers and burnished metallic pigments on lacquered surfaces, to give each object a distinct physical presence. The kyoka verses that would have been printed beside the image asked the viewer to read the still life as a portrait of the poet's own studio. As a Yashima Gakutei surimono in the Hokusai school manner, Bookcase with Writing Utensils is a small treatise on the rituals of a literary life, condensed into a single luxurious sheet.