Baumwollkimono mit Iris-Muster • Torii Kotondo • Japanischer Holzschnitt • Shin-Hanga - Japan - 20. Jahrhundert

TORII KOTONDO (1900–1976)
Cotton Kimono with Iris Pattern
From: Onna Jūnidai (Twelve Aspects of Women)
Original design: Shōwa 4 (1929) — this impression: Ishu Kankōkai, c. 1976–1978
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CONDITION

Excellent. A fresh, fully saturated impression with all the technical highlights of this design intact.

Printed on superb-quality handmade washi with full deckled edges and a wonderful, substantial hand-feel. The unprinted margins show a gentle, even cream-warm patina from undisturbed archival storage — the quiet tonal depth that only time produces on good washi, and that collectors specifically prize as evidence of original, unaltered condition.

Never framed, never light-exposed. All seals and credits bright and cleanly struck.

Sheet: c. 33 × 48.3 cm.

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THE DESIGN

A young woman kneels on a striped cushion before her dressing chest in the cool of a summer evening, fresh from the bath and dressed in a crisp indigo-and-white iris yukata. Her hair has been redressed in a full shimada with a vivid red shibori ornament; she lifts her right hand toward her face in the small, absorbed gesture of finishing her toilette before the mirror. A round paper uchiwa fan rests beside her on the cushion — the season's quiet shorthand.

The composition is one of Kotondo's most domestic and serene in the Onna Jūnidai set: no narrative, no eroticism, only the private summer moment between bath and evening, with the iris pattern of the yukata signalling the early-summer season of the fifth month. The graphic boldness of the indigo iris design plays against the delicate still-life of toiletry objects on the kyōdai — a contrast of scale and density that gives the sheet its quiet sophistication.

The ayame (iris) is one of the canonical motifs of summer dress in Japanese textile design, traditionally worn around the Boys' Day Festival (Tango no Sekku) on the fifth day of the fifth month — a layer of seasonal meaning Kotondo's contemporary audience would have read immediately.

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PRESENTATION & STORAGE

The print is housed in a modern archival conservation folder of our own preparation.

The original Ishu Kankōkai presentation folders — both the inner viewing folder with windowed mat and the outer protective folder bearing the series and print titles in Japanese — will of course be included with the shipment, as they are part of the publication and belong with the print.

Our recommendation, however, is to keep the print stored in the modern conservation folder we provide and to retain the original folders separately as documentation. The vintage paper folders, while beautifully made, are now nearly fifty years old and no longer offer the same protection against humidity and acidity that a contemporary archival housing does. Following this approach preserves both the print and the originality of the publisher's housing.