Japanese Woodblock Printed Book. Meika Gafu 1814

Rare Japanese Woodblock Printed Illustrated Book. Meika Gafu 1st. Series Pub. 1814

11 x 7 5/8 ins. (27.9 x 19.3 cms) Meika Gafu (A Book of Drawings by Celebrated Artists) was published in a proposed 3 volumes by the publisher Tohekido (Eirakuya Toshiro) in Bunka 11 (1814). In fact the work is only known in two volumes, 1 & 3. No copy of volume 2 has ever been found and it rumoured that the blocks were destroyed in a fire before printing. The present volume is the first and comprises 32 illustrations, some coloured and some monochrome, some single sheet and some double sheet. Each illustration represents the work of one artist among whom are Taigado, Rosetsu, Nantei, Baiitsu, Hocho, Gantai, Sosen, Buncho and many others, mainly but not exclusively, artists of the Shijo persuasion. The Kano and Nanga schools are also represented. A full list of the artists will be supplied with the book.

It Jack Hillier's seminal work, The Art of the Japanese Book, he refers to the work as "...an extremely important art survey,". The text includes biographical details of the artists. Mr. Hillier illustrates two plates from this volume, the landscape with the snow covered house by Rosetsu and the superb monkey by Sosen (see our illustrations) A measure of the importance of the work can be gauged by the fact that a plate of a frog from the 3rd. volume (not present) was used on the poster of the major exhibition of Japanese books at the British Museum in 1980.

The work was immensely popular and this volume shows signs of the vicissitudes of its life and popularity! The covers, although Mid. 19th. century, are not original and there is worm damage mainly confined to the upper margins and just below the margins but also on the lower parts of the first 10 or so sheets. There are various  minor stains, mainly to the preliminaries and the expected soiling, mainly the the lower outer corners where the pages have been turned. The book is complete in itself. The collation is as follows; Title page; Numbered sheets 1-2; Numbered sheets 1-2 with table of contents and biographical details; numbered sheets 1-32 of illustrations (the verso of sheet 32 is the closing note); a sheet of adverts for the publishers other works is inside the back cover. This volume appears to be identical with the copy described in C H Mitchell's Bibloiography of Nanga, Maruyama and Shijo Books (Los Angeles 1972) except their copy has a title page printed on brown paper.

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