Haku Maki did a wide range of works: prints of many sizes, book plates, greeting cards, and postcards. Here are four postcards that he did in 1999. They are lithographs, each signed and with a Maki seal. They also appeared as prints at the same time. Haku Maki or his family produced them in the last year or so of his life.
The third part of Note 10 looks at the prints Maki probably did in the 1969 to 1975 period but that, at the time of Dan Tretiak's writing this, had not yet come to light.
In the mid-1960s, Haku Maki was firmly launching his career as an important Japanese print maker. He did a series of prints of which a long and key series was the Alphabet A – Z. In turn, the Alphabet was the first series of what came to be many series of prints, all of which Maki called the Poem series. Prints in the Poem series continued to be produced until 1972. He produced all of the Alphabet in 1966 or part of it in that year and part in the next. Even at this old age I do not know the precise years. Furthermore, after a long effort of collecting the series, I do not have images for all 26 letters. I have never seen Poems G I J K L M N O S. The images are some of Maki’s quite good prints but none laid the ground work for important other work.
I cannot make a case that Poem U,a square woman, is a strong example of what the kanji for woman should be.
The pink sun and the quarter moon used in Poem D were used later on but I do not feel that is because they were used successfully in this series.
The black and white image is from
David J.Finkelstein in NY.
Here we show Poem A B C D E F H P Poem D's crescent moon appeared elsewhere. We show one example. C-1 was re-discovered in a chance find in our files. It is prime Japanese hieroglyphics: hoki moji or a kind of pointillism. Copyright 2013 Daniel Tretiak
Q R T U V W X Y (*) Z Poem T is a distant Predecessor of image 10
Most if not all the prints in this series were sold through Red Lantern Gallery in Kyoto. missing J K L M N O - other than G and S.
U is clearly a predecessor of Poem 59-55
This is Daniel Tretiak's note about Maki huge print Poem-Woman, which is a horizontal print that measures 3ft x 6ft. His note is in the photos that are a part of this entry. Here he described photos that he was presenting along with his note. He said: Frame 8 is the same image but done with a yellow sun and purple moon. It is 33/50. This suggests many of the first 33 and then some were done this way; then Maki did not use these colors. I do not own this print. The paper has the same wavy condition that Huge Woman had before restoring; in frame 9 I show the Huge Nothing.It is in the Portland Museum of Art. The last image is Work 73-54 (Fish) 54/54.
NOTE: Dan Tretiak went on to acquire both Poem Woman and Work 73-54 Fish.
Please read the research note in frame 12 of the photos. There apparently was some misnumbering--there is no Note 13.
This huge print Work 73-54 (Fish) is one of three unusually large prints Maki did. It measures 3ft x 6ft. Please see the research note that is included with the photos.
This note discusses newly emerged prints (it was written in July 2014). Daniel Tretiak wrote: Please enjoy. I own A C W and Flower Song 5.
This note looks at newly emerged prints that were created between 1968 and 1980. They include Work 616 (Moon and Bird) and the Figure series of prints.
This note looks at newly emerged prints (in 2015, that is) including Poem 72-110, Poem 70-10, and a work simply called 81-11.
This note, another of the many Daniel Tretiak wrote in 2015,looks at newly emerged early works of Haku Maki.
This is one of three research notes that were numbered 23. This one is about Work 73-2, a Maki homage to a 19th-century Chinese writer. Dan Tretiak wrote: Enigma. The original eBay seller wrote this in his listing. He really got it right. Maki’s print has the four-character phrase as done by Deng in his writing in the 19th century We confirm Deng and Maki were in sync. The arrangement of Maki’s gold seal is more used in Chinese than Japanese. In any case ENJOY