Japanese Kite Prints: Selections From The Skinner Collection
by John Stevenson
Category: Art

This book brings together two of Edo culture's most colorful traditions prints and kites. Woodblock prints were known as ukiyo-e, which means "pictures of the floating world," a pun on a Buddhist concept of the fleeting world of desires that is, coincidentally but poetically appropriate for a study of kites borne on the wind. The book includes a table of seals that enable precise dating of many woodblock prints, and an "Anatomy of a Woodblock Print" clarifying the texts often found on prints. All the major formats in the repertoire of Japanese woodblock prints are represented in the collection, from book pages dating from before the development of complex color printing to spectacular Kabuki prints and charming landscapes.