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Washington, United States
loves: you win if you guessed "pets" and "museums". Also books, art history, travel, British punk, Korean kimchi, bindis, martinis, and other things TBD. I will always make it very clear if a post is sponsored in any way. Drop me a line at thepetmuseum AT gmail.com !

Thursday, February 09, 2017

deux chats

Bibliothèque nationale de France, département Estampes et photographie, FOL-EF-449 (PD)
Here's the French engraver Prosper-Alphonse Isaac (1858-1924) with an elegant pair of creatures.   After years mastering and producing dry point, aquatint and other Western methods, Isaac turned to Japanese wood-engraving technique.  These cats are from that period, dating roughly 1908-1912.  Japanese woodprints used waterbased inks, which had fresh, vivid ranges of color; you can see that here even in the simple lines.
For the fun of it, I found this 1898 text on Japanese wood engravings. It's full of illustrations, even if you don't want to slog through the text.  Have a flip through it.

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