Author: Hayashi Tamiji.
Title: [Kibutsu Zushiki - Vessel Patterns (more or less)].
Description: Tokyo, Hayashi Tamiji 1888 [Meiji 21]. 245x180mm publisher's wrapper with printed label (sometime rebacked with rice paper and since split down the spine); [2]pp, one single and 51 double page litho plates. Bound as an accordian fold, with one plate separated down the fold. Signs of use but pretty good for a book virtually guaranteed to be used to pieces - as was the only other copy I've seen.. ¶ An intriguing thing: a lithographed pattern book for export ceramic ware and very much a working book. Essential at the time when Japanese manufactury moved from craft to industry with the introduction of plaster casting, transfer printing and so on. Pots, cups and saucers, jugs, vases, urns, bowls ... some items are shown decorated, some show enough decoration to be a guide and many are outline plates - some at full scale - to get the form right. Getting the form right was the important bit at this point, pattern books for decoration were plentiful. This has the look of being adapted from a Chinese work - which makes sense, the Chinese had a long established export market, and some of the forms here are already a century old - but I can't trace what that may be; nor can I find much about this. Worldcat finds only a copy in Chicago and the National Diet Library entry, which via CiNii leads us to Kyushu University, the sole copy.

Keywords: applied arts design ceramics japan china c19th trades manufactures pattern books Asia meiji