Details
The image
A botanical plate in which flowers and leaves are drawn with an even, patient line and filled with flat colour, the paper left bare between the stems. The composition runs up the sheet rather than across it and nothing is shaded to suggest volume.
Where it comes from
The print belongs to Yatsuo no tsubaki, the series Taguchi Tomoki produced between 1860 and 1869, a set of botanical woodblocks made at the end of the Edo period, when the craft of the medium was at its most refined. The work was cut and printed by hand in separate blocks for each colour and the discipline of that process is visible in the result: contour first, colour second, no corrections possible once the knife had moved.
On the wall
It suits a study, a bedroom or a reading corner, where a vertical image with open space makes a small room feel taller. Because the line is fine and the palette limited, it needs daylight and a wall that is not busy. In a group it should be the calmest piece.
In company
The spacing and the weight of line carry across the whole Taguchi Tomoki collection.Two sheets hung as a pair read as a sequence; a third turns the wall into a pattern.
