Catalog (279)

The dramatic Poem 70-37 is the kanji for Self已. It measures 17.5in W x 24in H and is in very good condition.(There is slight toning in the margins.)

This is another of Haku Maki’s depictions of the kanji天 for day, heaven, sky. It’s a fairly easy character to make stark and lovely. The next year, 1971, he did another black-and-white dramatic rendering of the same kanji (Poem 71-51, which is below at #1452042 (stock #1077). The print is 12in square and in excellent condition.

Dragons—or at least the kanji for them—featured often in Haku Maki’s work. Work 73-12A –black kanji on white—came out first in 1973 and was followed quickly by a black dragon on red (which follows this one on this site). It measures 11.5inW x 15.25inH, is 16 of an edition of 103, and is in good condition

Over the course of his print-making life, Haku Maki often depicted the kanji for Man, Woman, and Child. This is a “man” from 1979; it measures 9.5in W x 10.75in H and numbers 42 of a total edition of 204.

Poem 71-71 is a Maki depiction of 子 Child and is one of those large red kanji on a black background that Daniel Tretiak valled a Big Red. This one measures 12in W by 17.5in H and is no.13 of an edition of 153. It is in excellent condition.

Poem 70-19 is one of the fairly small group of deep blue prints that Maki made. This one is 5.75 in W x 8.5in H and created in 1970. It is in good condition, with some toning due to its once having been framed.

What fun this print is—a swirl of kanji virtually unreadable but a delight to the eye. 79-9 was done in 1979 and measures 9.25in W x 10.75in H. The print is in excellent condition.

Collection 30 is one of the many striking prints of ceramics that fascinated Maki from the late 1970s to the early 1990s. Maki’s ceramic prints conveyed the “feel” of the bowls or cups or wine vessels—a sense of how it would feel if touched was imparted to the viewer through his ability to suggest texture in his prints. In this case, a black bowl has red places showing through the black, suggesting that the potter fired it first with a red glaze, then decided to cover it by coating it with black paint. Collection 30 is 9.5in W x 10.75in H. Created in 1979 (the date is in the Maki signature), the print is in great condition with only slight toning suggesting it was at some point framed.

Poem 70-10 is the kanji for day 日. It is a striking, simply executed print. Created in 1970, it is now over a half-century old. The print is 17.5in W x 24.5in H, large (but not huge). As Daniel Tretiak has said: In 1970 quite suddenly Haku Maki started producing truly large prints. He tells us that this one was large but Maki was destined to do even larger ones, that year and in 1973.

This print is Haku Maki’s 78-6 水Water, number 108 in an edition of 151. Earlier that year,1978, he had already produced dramatic single-kanji large black and white prints. The first two, 78-1 Mountain and 78-2 Water, both horizontal prints, were 17in W x 9.25in H. They were followed soon after by 78-6, also horizontal. But this depiction of the kanji for water is nearly twice the size of the previous two: his 78-6 is 32.5 inches wide and 17 inches high (83cm W X 43.5cm H). Hence, the drama of his black-and-white calligraphy is here even more pronounced. The print is embossed and carries some calligraphy in the upper right quadrant of the print that he applied by hand, after drawing the prints.

Haku Maki loved the kanji (Chinese character) for dragon—and he did it more than once. Both of the above—Work 73-14 A on the left and Work 73-12A—were done in 1973. Read about them in more detail below at stock numbers 1005 and 1039. NOTE: Those born in the Dragon year were born in 1928, 1940, 1952, 1964, 1976, 1988, 2000, 2012, 2024.

This ring has been in my collection for decades, since 1980 in fact. It’s called Serenity but I’ve always called it my flattened egg ring. According to Georg Jensen archives, the ring was designed by Vivianna Torun Bülow-Hübe in 1974 (sometimes people accredit it to other designers). The ring is US size 6 but its design is very forgiving—it accommodates a larger finger. It is no longer in production.

Flower Song 3 In the Mid-60s Maki did a set of ten different images, entitled Flower Song This is Flower Song 3. It is a very abstract print: it is probably not kanji (Chinese characters); it is similar to prints entitled, say Dance. It could be the character for woman: at the left there may also be the kanji for woman (oona) with a single stroke perhaps penetrating the woman -- but is probably not. The Flower Song images are rare, and when available often either in poor condition or costly. This print is in good but sadly not in pristine condition. The front is fine, the back has a bit of foxing. Still striking image. One Dance images appears in my book, The Life and Works of Haku Maki "Dance 4", p. 37. It was Maki's style to punctuate a print with a splash or as in this case, with a Big Yellow Sun, at the top right. The swaths that make up the print look as if they were done by a big Japanese brush. Whooowh. I date this to having been done in the mid to late 1960s.

A diptych of Maki prints, one done in 1968 and the other in 1969. In the best of Maki's spartan austere style, they are Poem 68-40 and Poem 69-13.

Haku Maki produced this “pair” of prints in 1968. The first image is Child. This is the first time Maki produced an image with Child as a theme. Poem 68-52. The second one is his kanji for Water. Poem 68-53. This image was used again in the set of 21 prints he produced for Festive Wine, which was issued in 1969. The colors in both are strikingly beautiful in these images – as they also are as prints. Maki signed each in white ink, something he rarely did. Both prints have had hard lives, they were actually folded. Now they have been wonderfully restored.

In 1968 Haku Maki produced this large Blue image of Child. The blue is vivid and the yellow face is in sharp contrast. To the far right is a small Green Child, the same theme, different key color. It appeared in 1969. The red image is a trial run for a Festive Wine print. It never made it. The translators of Festive Wine or Anne Brannen nixed it and used a different Child image, the fifth frame. It might appear that the block used to produce all thee was the same; however, the Blue image is considerably larger than that used for the red and green ones. Blue one is Poem 68-53 12.26" x 16.25"

The image on the left was done in 1970 the other in 1971. The image at the left looks like 2 or 3 quick brush strokes. It is very delicate. It can mean clothing. The image at the right is heavy, many brush strokes, a complicated kanji. It can mean depression. It is Poem 71-14.

Around 1960 Haku Maki probably did the Ox as a woodblock print. He was then a young artist in Tokyo. He may have done some Ox images before James Michener did his now wellknown book, but probably not many: 510 were used in the book The Modern Japanese Print". The prints of Japanese artists included in the book are large-ish, it is not embossed. The print is in excellent shape--it is still tipped onto the original archival backing that was in the book. In 1999 toward the end of his life, Maki did the print again; undoubtedly he did a new block and ran it off. This was an edition of just 75. Here I show the old and the new Ox prints; old is at the left. The appearance of Ox in this book presaged Maki doing 21 prints in Festive Wine by 1969, including an Ox. That one seems almost to have been dancing. 19” x 12”