SOKEN GAFU Soka no Bu
- SIGNED
- 1806
1806. [EHON] Yamaguchi SOKEN. SOKEN GAFU Sôka no Bu. 3 volumes, complete.
Medium grey paper covers with original printed title labels.
String-bound Japanese-style, fukuro-toji. 26.2 x 19.0 cm. Bunka 3
[1806] Illustrated in b+w and grey woodcut throughout. This is
perhaps Sôken's most successful ehon - illustrating a series of
plants and grasses quite wonderfully. There is much use of block
scraping to produce wonderful printing effects, especially on
leaves and stems. The difficulty of the printing techniques means
that this book always hovers on the edge of aesthetic disaster -
when it is good it is very good, when it doesn't work it dissolves
into pictorial chaos. Ours is very good. I have compared our copy
to the Chaikin/Gillot/Hayashi copy which is the benchmark for the
book and it holds up very well - the main difference being in the
paper - the Chaikin copy being printed on whiter, thinner, harder
"chinese-style" paper and this copy being on a heavier, softer,
Japanese-style buff paper. As for bibliographic details, our
colophon is identical to the Mitchell, etc. copies, save that in
ours the names of the Kyoto bookseller/publishers have been excised
from the block, indicating a somewhat later printing. A remarkably
nice copy of a very scarce and important book. The Louis Gonse copy
sold at the Beres sale in 2002.
Medium grey paper covers with original printed title labels.
String-bound Japanese-style, fukuro-toji. 26.2 x 19.0 cm. Bunka 3
[1806] Illustrated in b+w and grey woodcut throughout. This is
perhaps Sôken's most successful ehon - illustrating a series of
plants and grasses quite wonderfully. There is much use of block
scraping to produce wonderful printing effects, especially on
leaves and stems. The difficulty of the printing techniques means
that this book always hovers on the edge of aesthetic disaster -
when it is good it is very good, when it doesn't work it dissolves
into pictorial chaos. Ours is very good. I have compared our copy
to the Chaikin/Gillot/Hayashi copy which is the benchmark for the
book and it holds up very well - the main difference being in the
paper - the Chaikin copy being printed on whiter, thinner, harder
"chinese-style" paper and this copy being on a heavier, softer,
Japanese-style buff paper. As for bibliographic details, our
colophon is identical to the Mitchell, etc. copies, save that in
ours the names of the Kyoto bookseller/publishers have been excised
from the block, indicating a somewhat later printing. A remarkably
nice copy of a very scarce and important book. The Louis Gonse copy
sold at the Beres sale in 2002.