Bowl, scissors, and morning glories

This still-life [surimono](/glossary/surimono) [shikishiban](/glossary/shikishiban) gathers a porcelain bowl, a pair of scissors, and a stalk of morning glories into a compressed seasonal vignette, the kind of objects-and-flowers composition that defined a major strand of Gakutei's kyoka-e practice. Dated to around 1820 and held by the Art Institute of Chicago, the print belongs to the surimono tradition of depicting commonplace utensils alongside flowering plants as triggers for poetic association, where the morning glory evokes the fleeting hours of summer dawn and the scissors and bowl suggest the rituals of flower arrangement. Gakutei renders each object with linear precision and reserves metallic pigments for accents on the bowl's glaze and the morning-glory leaves, producing the characteristic interplay of matte and lustrous surfaces that surimono connoisseurs prized. Such still-life designs offered kyoka poets a tightly compressed visual frame on which to inscribe seasonal verse, and the surviving impression at the Art Institute documents Gakutei's mastery of the genre at a moment when the surimono boom was approaching its technical zenith.