Accession Number
1950/1.207

Title
Women's Occupations: Sericulture (1 of a series of 12 prints): weaving

Artist(s)
Kitagawa Utamaro

Artist Nationality
Japanese (culture or style)

Object Creation Date
circa 1802

Medium & Support
full color woodblock print (nishiki e), reprodution

Dimensions
15 1/8 in. x 10 5/16 in. ( 38.4 cm x 26.2 cm )

Credit Line
Gift of Jean Paul Slusser

Label copy
Women of all occupations was a popular theme in woodblock prints of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Kitagawa Utamaro, one of the leading artists of Edo (modern Tokyo), renders this version with mildly erotic overtones. This image is the twelfth and last in a series depicting women making silk.
This reproduction of a famous print tells us much about textiles for urban commoners at time. The seated woman spinning thread wears a green kosode (short-sleeved kimono) with a paste-resist landscape design. Her companion at the loom wears an indigo-dyed robe with an overall stencil-print design of stylized blossoms, and the standing figure wears a simple woven plaid. Cotton textiles dyed in these techniques were the most common for everyday wear in the cities.
Exhibited in "Japanese Costumes & Ceramics, Past & Present," October 2001-February 2002. Maribeth Graybill, Senior Curator of Asian Art

Primary Object Classification
Print

Primary Object Type
color print

Collection Area
Asian

Rights
If you are interested in using an image for a publication, please visit http://umma.umich.edu/request-image for more information and to fill out the online Image Rights and Reproductions Request Form.

Keywords
kneeling
seated
standing
ukiyo e