Haori with Penguins and Icebreaker ShipsJapan, mid-Shōwa period, 1957-58silk plain weave, stencil-printed warp and weft[photos by author] Penguins (Spheniscidae) are found almost exclusively in the Southern Hemisphere, with only the Galápagos penguin (Spheniscus mendiculus) skirting the other side of the equator. They definitely aren’t native to anywhere near Japan! I saw…
Here is a bonus item for #NationalLobsterDay that I found while searching the Met collection because I’m just loving this clever design: FYI: “A kozuka is a handle of a by-knife that is part of a sword mounting. It is kept in a slot on the reverse of a katana…
Sometimes I make stupid memes of the animal art I come across in my research. This one got turned into a sticker, mostly just because I wanted to buy one for myself: https://www.redbubble.com/shop/ap/122876299 ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
“Feathered Ink” is a new exhibition at the Smithsonian National Museum of Asian Art which “explores how Japanese artists have experimented over several centuries with different brush techniques in their depictions of avian subjects,” and showcases three galleries of hanging scroll paintings, folding screens, ceramics, and printed books. In Japan,…
Festival Kimono, Akita Prefecture, Tōhoku region, Honshū. Late 19th-early 20th century. Cotton; shibori (shape resist) 51 × 50 inches (129.6 × 127 cm) “The motif on the back of the garment is known as koi no takinobori (“carp ascending a waterfall”), which was an immensely popular design. It references a…
This fabulous frog racking up likes and retweets on Twitter can be found amongst the over 100 species of flora and 50 species of fauna in a huge scroll painting by Ito Jakuchu called “Saichufu” (also known in English as “Compendium of Vegetables and Insects”). Here is a detail of the…
This is from a series of nine woodcuts depicting humorous scenes of anthropomorphic goldfish, frogs, and turtles. This particular piece is inspired by the pun of its title, playing off the the fact that in Japanese niwaka ame (にわか あめ) means “shower” and amenbo (アメンボ) means “water striders” — hence,…
It’s on my to-do list to try to identify all the different species scurrying around here. For now, I’ll just note that there is an imposter crustacean in the mix — Horseshoe Crabs (family Limulidae) aren’t true crabs, and aren’t even crustaceans. 😉 (They’re chelicerates, a whole different subphylum of arthropods…
