Antique and Vintage Woodblock Prints
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Epic Ink: How Japanese Warrior Prints Popularized the Full-Body Tattoo
By Hunter Oatman-Stanford — In the late 1820s, when artist Utagawa Kuniyoshi debuted his stunning new series of warrior prints, Japanese culture was well into a period of flux. Since around 1615, after the ruling Tokugawa family established their headquarters in Edo (the former name for Tokyo), the country had been set on a course of rapid urbanization and isolation from the global order. The private wealth of Japan's thriving merchant class fueled the emergence of the so-called Floating World—shadowy urban districts...
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To Hell With Helvetica: Is an 1874 Type Catalog the World's Most Beautiful Book?
By Ben Marks — William Hamilton Page was not the first American to earn a living cutting slabs of end-grain sugar maple into precisely ornate blocks of wood type, but he was definitely the first American to push this once-ubiquitous printing format into the realm of fine art. The proof of Page’s artistry can be found in , an 1874 sales catalog of wooden fonts and graphic flourishes manufactured by Wm. H. Page & Co. Considered by typography nerds to be “The Most Beautiful Book in the World,” Page’s...
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Sex and Suffering: The Tragic Life of the Courtesan in Japan's Floating World
By Lisa Hix — It’s difficult to get a window into the world of Edo-Period Japanese prostitutes without the gauzy romantic filter of the male gaze. The artworks in the new San Francisco Asian Art Museum exhibition, “Seduction: Japan’s Floating World,” were made by men for men, the patrons of the Yoshiwara pleasure district outside of Edo, which is now known as Tokyo. Every little detail of Yoshiwara—from the décor and fashion, to the delicacies served at teahouses, to the talents of courtesans, both sexual...
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David Lance Goines Discusses Perfect Poster Design
By Maribeth Keane — I don’t collect posters. I don’t collect anything. I started making posters one at a time by hand in high school just for specific events, basically got going when I was a freshman. I still make them today, but they’re printed on a printing press now. I’ve made 221 posters, not including the ones I did in high school. Fundamentally, I believe that in order to be effective as opposed to artsy and not really effective at all, a poster has to be extremely simple. The Shepard Fairey posters...