The line, before colour
Before the woodblock print had colour, it had this: a single black line, pulled from one carved block, doing all the work.1 It is called sumizuri-e — "ink-printed picture" — and it is how ukiyo-e, the art of the floating world, began.2 This sheet is attributed to Hishikawa Moronobu, the man usually named the first great master of that art.3
A son of cloth
Moronobu was born around 1618, the son of an embroiderer, and he started out drawing designs for embroidery on fabric.4 That textile eye stayed in his hand. When he moved to Edo he turned to book illustration and then to prints, and by the 1670s he was the most important print designer in the city — the one who pulled a scattered, still-forming genre into a standard the next century would build on.5
He designed; someone else cut
In ukiyo-e the artist did not carve. Moronobu drew the image with a brush; a professional carver cut the key block — the black outline that, in sumizuri-e, is the whole print — and a printer pulled it.6 It was collaborative, near-industrial, cheap, and made for a wide city audience. This is a page from an untitled series, catalogued by the museum, with characteristic discretion, as "After a Little Music."7
Back on cloth
He began by drawing for fabric and ended as the master of a printed art that has now returned, three and a half centuries later, to fabric. What you wear is a fragment of his line in a single ink — designed by the hand that shaped the floating world, and printed, as it always was, flat.
Notes & sources
- Sumizuri-e: a monochrome woodblock print in black sumi ink, pulled from the key block. Art Institute of Chicago; Wikipedia.
- The earliest form of ukiyo-e woodblock, printed in a single black ink before colour arrived. Wikipedia.
- "After a little music, from an untitled series of 12 erotic prints," attributed to Hishikawa Moronobu; c. 1673–81; woodblock print, ōban, sumizuri-e. Art Institute of Chicago, 1973.645.5; public domain.
- Hishikawa Moronobu (c. 1618–1694), son of an embroiderer; he began by drawing designs for embroidery. Britannica; Wikipedia.
- By the 1670s the leading ukiyo-e designer in Edo; called "the first great master of ukiyo-e," he matured a genre that already existed rather than inventing it alone. Britannica; Wikipedia.
- In ukiyo-e the artist designs; a carver (horishi) cuts the key block and a printer (surishi) prints. Asian Art Museum; The Met.
- The museum's own euphemistic title for the sheet. Art Institute of Chicago.