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Lot Essay
These are genre scenes showing the stages of sericulture, traditionally women's work. It is a series of twelve designs, each sheet individually numbered from one to twelve, which in fact form a complete twelve-sheet composition. According to Asano Shugo and Timothy Clark, the color scheme emphasizes purple (and avoids red) in the so-called "purple picture" (murasaki-e) manner. The text, written within cloud-shaped borders at the top of each print, is taken verbatim from the series of twelve chuban prints designed by Katsukawa Shunsho and Kitao Shigemasa c.1772, Kaiko yashinai-kusa (see lot 8). The illustrations, on the other hand, are not copied so closely. In the collection of the Tokyo National Museum, there are proof prints (kyogo-zuri) for the key-blocks of nos. 3 and 6 of this series.
Other impressions of the complete set are held in the Musées Royaux d'Art et d'Histoire, Bruxelles; The Art Institute of Chicago; Elvehjem Museum of Art, University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Other impressions of the complete set are held in the Musées Royaux d'Art et d'Histoire, Bruxelles; The Art Institute of Chicago; Elvehjem Museum of Art, University of Wisconsin-Madison.