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forthcoming
Product details
- ISBN 9789464781229
- Dimensions: 215 x 265mm
- Publication Date: 03 Sep 2026
- Publisher: Ludion
- Publication City/Country: BE
- Product Form: Hardback
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The complete resource on Japanese woodblock printing
Japanese woodblock prints, exemplified by iconic works such as Hokusai’s Great Wave, Utamaro’s portraits of beauties, Hiroshige’s Heavy Rain on Ohashi Bridge, and Kuniyoshi’s tattooed warriors, represent one of the most influential art forms in history. While the artists behind these masterpieces are celebrated worldwide, the many others who played crucial roles in their creation, style, and distribution have long remained overlooked.
Publishers were the driving force behind the highly commercial world of Japanese printmaking. They evaluated market demand, commissioned designs from artists, and assumed the financial risks of production. Once a design was completed, the publisher coordinated every step of the process: obtaining censor approval, hiring block carvers and printers, and overseeing the distribution of prints to specific audiences.
The Japanese Woodblock Prints Companion explores this collaborative production process and highlights the indispensable contributions of publishers, carvers, and printers—without whom many celebrated works, later admired by Western artists such as Monet, Van Gogh, and Toulouse-Lautrec, would never have existed.
Andreas Marks’ book profiles more than 1,900 publishers and nearly 900 carvers and printers, includes publication lists for almost 1,000 artists, and reproduces thousands of publisher, carver, and printer seals, covering a period from the 1640s to the 1990s. Each entry documents places of operation, active periods, clientele, and issued print series, offering insight into professional status, favored collaborations, and distinctive working strategies. Lists of censor and collector seals further enrich the reference.
With over 1,000 pages of detailed information, this companion is an essential resource for scholars and collectors and a comprehensive tribute to the often-unsung figures who shaped the history of Japanese woodblock prints.
Japanese woodblock prints, exemplified by iconic works such as Hokusai’s Great Wave, Utamaro’s portraits of beauties, Hiroshige’s Heavy Rain on Ohashi Bridge, and Kuniyoshi’s tattooed warriors, represent one of the most influential art forms in history. While the artists behind these masterpieces are celebrated worldwide, the many others who played crucial roles in their creation, style, and distribution have long remained overlooked.
Publishers were the driving force behind the highly commercial world of Japanese printmaking. They evaluated market demand, commissioned designs from artists, and assumed the financial risks of production. Once a design was completed, the publisher coordinated every step of the process: obtaining censor approval, hiring block carvers and printers, and overseeing the distribution of prints to specific audiences.
The Japanese Woodblock Prints Companion explores this collaborative production process and highlights the indispensable contributions of publishers, carvers, and printers—without whom many celebrated works, later admired by Western artists such as Monet, Van Gogh, and Toulouse-Lautrec, would never have existed.
Andreas Marks’ book profiles more than 1,900 publishers and nearly 900 carvers and printers, includes publication lists for almost 1,000 artists, and reproduces thousands of publisher, carver, and printer seals, covering a period from the 1640s to the 1990s. Each entry documents places of operation, active periods, clientele, and issued print series, offering insight into professional status, favored collaborations, and distinctive working strategies. Lists of censor and collector seals further enrich the reference.
With over 1,000 pages of detailed information, this companion is an essential resource for scholars and collectors and a comprehensive tribute to the often-unsung figures who shaped the history of Japanese woodblock prints.
Andreas Marks studied East Asian art history at the University of Bonn and obtained his PhD in Japanology from Leiden University with a thesis on 19th-century actor prints. From 2008 to 2013 he was director and chief curator of the Clark Center for Japanese Art in Hanford, California, and since 2013 has been the Mary Griggs Burke Curator of Japanese and Korean Art and director of the Clark Center for Japanese Art at the Minneapolis Institute of Art. He is an award-winning author of 24 books on different aspects of Japanese art. In 2011, he received support from the Metropolitan Center for his publication about the ceramic artist Fukami Sueharu. In 2024, Marks was awarded the commendation of the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs for his contributions to the promotion of Japanese culture.
