Author: Communications - Japan.
Title: Post. A handmade (draft? mock up?) picture book or sketches for paintings on telecommunication and post in Meiji Japan; with "Post" scrolled across what passes for the title page.
Description: n.p. c1900 to 1906. 21x29cm patterned wrapper; 27 full page ink drawings (18 coloured) and three pages of text, mostly on translucent drawing paper, mounted on 15 double leaves. Album paper and some drawings spotted. The figure on the title was cut from a drawing of women operators near the end; a figure in another drawing has been redrawn and overlaid on the original; captions sometimes in ink, sometimes in pencil and sometimes not there; drawings of the telegram boys and the women operators exist as ink and as coloured drawings; all signs of work in progress ¶ Something of a marvel and mystery. Two of the drawings are signed Asahi but I find no other clue to who made this and why: was it a commission by the Ministry of Communications for a picture book? an exhibition? for a publisher? Our artist has been given access to the inner workings of the service so this is not the fancy of an idle amateur. Tejima Asahi (or Kyokko depending on the reading) has been suggested as the artist but since I can find nothing more than his date of birth it doesn't help me much. And I'm not sure it matters much. Shibata Shinsai produced a similar series of paintings drawn from life showing the workings of the post office in 1884 that were exhibited at the New Orleans World Fair. Now, here, we have new uniforms, bicycles, telegrams and telephones to celebrate. Which makes the date more definite than the artist: bicycles for telegram boys were introduced in 1892 and in 1906 red was gazetted as their official colour; public telephone boxes appeared in 1900. I don't believe a finished book or an exhibition of finished paintings from our album appeared. Shibata's paintings are a singular treasure of the Postal Museum, reproduced on the covers of their journal, where a lot of time and effort has gone into the study of their collection of paintings, prints and advertisements that show anything of the postal service. I was struck by just how ubiquitous telegram boys, postmen and parcel deliverers are in scenes of busy Meiji life and how many letter boxes and telegraph poles feature in the symbolic frames within frames of popular prints. It's unthinkable that anything like this album would be ignored and nothing else like this seem to exist. The drawings are variable in finish and finesse - until we come to the young women telephone operators where the lines are fluid and confident. Was it because our artist had still models to capture? because he had more time? or because he enjoyed drawing women much more than men? I read somewhere that women did not work nightshifts on the switchboards until complaints about the rudeness and unhelpfulness of male operators saw them banished altogether.
Keywords: social sciences history technology communication post office telephones c19th c20th Japan modernism meiji
Title: Post. A handmade (draft? mock up?) picture book or sketches for paintings on telecommunication and post in Meiji Japan; with "Post" scrolled across what passes for the title page.
Description: n.p. c1900 to 1906. 21x29cm patterned wrapper; 27 full page ink drawings (18 coloured) and three pages of text, mostly on translucent drawing paper, mounted on 15 double leaves. Album paper and some drawings spotted. The figure on the title was cut from a drawing of women operators near the end; a figure in another drawing has been redrawn and overlaid on the original; captions sometimes in ink, sometimes in pencil and sometimes not there; drawings of the telegram boys and the women operators exist as ink and as coloured drawings; all signs of work in progress ¶ Something of a marvel and mystery. Two of the drawings are signed Asahi but I find no other clue to who made this and why: was it a commission by the Ministry of Communications for a picture book? an exhibition? for a publisher? Our artist has been given access to the inner workings of the service so this is not the fancy of an idle amateur. Tejima Asahi (or Kyokko depending on the reading) has been suggested as the artist but since I can find nothing more than his date of birth it doesn't help me much. And I'm not sure it matters much. Shibata Shinsai produced a similar series of paintings drawn from life showing the workings of the post office in 1884 that were exhibited at the New Orleans World Fair. Now, here, we have new uniforms, bicycles, telegrams and telephones to celebrate. Which makes the date more definite than the artist: bicycles for telegram boys were introduced in 1892 and in 1906 red was gazetted as their official colour; public telephone boxes appeared in 1900. I don't believe a finished book or an exhibition of finished paintings from our album appeared. Shibata's paintings are a singular treasure of the Postal Museum, reproduced on the covers of their journal, where a lot of time and effort has gone into the study of their collection of paintings, prints and advertisements that show anything of the postal service. I was struck by just how ubiquitous telegram boys, postmen and parcel deliverers are in scenes of busy Meiji life and how many letter boxes and telegraph poles feature in the symbolic frames within frames of popular prints. It's unthinkable that anything like this album would be ignored and nothing else like this seem to exist. The drawings are variable in finish and finesse - until we come to the young women telephone operators where the lines are fluid and confident. Was it because our artist had still models to capture? because he had more time? or because he enjoyed drawing women much more than men? I read somewhere that women did not work nightshifts on the switchboards until complaints about the rudeness and unhelpfulness of male operators saw them banished altogether.
Keywords: social sciences history technology communication post office telephones c19th c20th Japan modernism meiji
Price: AUD 3000.00 = appr. US$ 2075.61 Seller: Richard Neylon, Bookseller
- Book number: 10894
- Book number: 10894