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Calab Rare Books

Koshiro ONCHI

Koshiro ONCHI

Umi No Dowa.  Unpaginated, 8ff.  Illustrated with 6 polychrome woodcuts.  Small 4to., 285 x 215 mm, bound in publisher's printed wrappers, in a new grey cloth box with a blue label.  Tokyo: Hanga-So, Showa 9 [1934].

A superb example of Onchi's skill as a bookmaker, which earn a place among the twentieth century's most important book artists." Onchi contrived to have published a number of albums of his prints, often accompanied by his own verses. The 1934 'Umi no Dowa,' 'Nursery Tales ofartist himself on fifteen blocks' (though never more than three for any one print), with verses by the artist. The designs are of a kind of chance groupings of fragments of human figures or everyday objects, in conjunction with geometrical shapes, the block-applied colour making its own quite illogical contribution. One is reminded more than anything else of the abstracts of certain Russian Constructivists of the 1920s, with their spare designs partially helped out by machine drawing, and it is conceivable that Onchi had had the chance to study specimens of their work. ' (Hillier

OCLC lists Metropolitan Museum of Art, Getty, Harvard, Princeton, MFA Houston and National Diet Library.

Hillier, Jack: The Art of the Japanese Illustrated Book (London, 1987), p. 1019f.

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