The Tenth Month 1757 - 1777

Ishikawa Toyomasa made "The Tenth Month" as a woodblock print sometime in the late 1700s. This piece exemplifies ‘ukiyo-e’, or “pictures of the floating world.” The delicate lines and colors are the result of a painstaking process. First, the artist would have created a drawing, which was then transferred to a wood block. Specialist carvers cut away the wood around the lines of the design. Finally, printers applied ink to the block and pressed paper against it, building up layers of color. This printmaking tradition relied on the division of labor, connecting the creativity of the artist to the skill of the craftsman. It is easy to see how this process could be industrialized, churning out many copies of an image. But in its original form, this print represents a considered combination of art, craft, and mercantile activity. As with any artwork, understanding its meaning requires that we appreciate not just the image, but the modes of production through which it came into being.