Courses on Japanese Prints/Illustrated Books
Rare Book School
2004, a collection of five-day, non-credit courses on topics concerning rare
books, manuscripts, the history of books and printing, and special
collections to be held at the University of Virginia.
FOR AN APPLICATION FORM and electronic copies of the complete brochure and
the RBS Expanded Course Descriptions, providing additional details about the
courses offered and other information about RBS, visit our Web site at:
Subscribers to the list may find the following Rare Book School courses to
be of particular interest:
42. JAPANESE PRINTMAKING, 1615-1868. (MONDAY-FRIDAY, 14-18 JUNE). A survey
of Ukiyo-e, the art of the Japanese woodblock print. Ukiyo-e literally means
"floating art world," and it is through an exploration of the Floating World
that produced this art that we come to understand it. The course considers
how the Floating World developed in the c17 out of the earlier court
culture, how it created an interest in the courtesans, actors, and famous
places of Japan that became the chief subject-matter of c17-c19 printmakers,
and how it declined and changed in the late c19. The course will take
advantage of the extensive collection of Japanese prints owned by the
University of Virginia Art Museum. Instructor: Sandy Kita.
SANDY KITA is Assistant Professor of Japanese Art at the University of
Maryland, and is the author of A Hidden Treasure: Japanese Woodblock Prints
in the James Austin Collection (1996) and The Last Tosa: Iwasa Katsumochi
Matabei, Bridge to Ukiyo-e (1999).
66. JAPANESE ILLUSTRATED BOOKS, 1615-1868 (MONDAY-FRIDAY, 12-16 JULY,
WALTERS ART MUSEUM, BALTIMORE, MD). Commercial publishing flourished in
Japan in the Tokugawa period (1615-1868). Book illustration came into its
own in Japan by the closing decades of the c17. At first, the illustrations
were printed in black only; color printing from multiple blocks was fully
mastered by 1760. Thereafter color was commonly used in book production,
although books with line only illustrations continued to be produced in
large numbers to the end of the period. The success of these book
illustrations depended upon the close collaboration of artists, copyists,
blockcutters and printers under the supervision of publishers responsive to
the demands of the market.This course provides an introduction to
illustrated books and prints produced in Japan, 1615- 1868. Topics to be
covered include: overview of the history of the period; the physical
characteristics of Japanese books and their modes of production and
distribution (publishers, booksellers & book-lenders, readers, marketing);
the major categories of Japanese illustrated books (painting manuals, copy
books, picture books without words, poetry anthologies, novels,
topographical studies, botanical surveys, erotica); books illustrated by
artists of the Ukiyo-e, Nanga, Kanô and Maruyama-Shijô schools; the impact
of imported Chinese books on Japanese book production; the development of
single-sheet woodblock prints in the context of the history of the Japanese
illustrated book; issues related to conserving, cataloging, and describing
Japanese books. Instructor: Ellis Tinios.
ELLIS TINIOS Honorary Lecturer in the School of History, University of
Leeds; Research Associate at the Japan Research Centre, School of Oriental
and African Studies, University of London; and special assistant to the
Japanese Section of the Department of Asia, British Museum. He is the author
of Mirror of the Stage: The Actor Prints of Kunisada (1996), On the Margins
of the City: Recreation on the Periphery of Edo with Paul Waley (1999) and
Kawamura Bumpô: Artist of the Two Worlds (2003); and he is a contributor to
Masterful Illusions: Japanese Prints in the Anne van Biema Collection
(2002). He has written a number of articles dealing with nineteenth-century
Japanese actor prints and illustrated books. He is currently engaged in
producing a catalogue of books by Maruyama-Shijô artists in the British
Museum, which will form part of a larger publication dealing with the
Maruyama-Shijô paintings, prints, and books held by the Museum. He teaches
this RBS course for the first time in 2004.
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Rare Book School
114 Alderman Library
PO Box 400103
Charlottesville, VA 22904-4103
Phone: 434-924-8851
Fax: 434-924-8824