The Frank Lloyd Wright Collection of Surimono

The Frank Lloyd Wright Collection of Surimono
by Joan B. Mirviss with John T. Carpenter
Adopted by
Trevor Barger
In honor of my dad, Roger, who taught me to see and my mom, Jennifer, who taught me to look for order.
on March 6, 2017
The Frank Lloyd Wright Collection of Surimono

The Frank Lloyd Wright collection of surimono

By Joan B. Mirviss with John T. Carpenter. New York ; Phoenix: Weatherhill ; Phoenix Art Museum, 1995.

The Frank Lloyd Wright Collection of Surimono is the Phoenix Art Museum’s groundbreaking study of the long overlooked art of surimono prints. This catalog was published to accompany the exhibition, “Frank Lloyd Wright and Japanese Art.” Surimono were Japanese woodblock prints privately commissioned for special occasions, an important event, or for circulation among a small group of people. Several features that set surimono apart from commercially produced woodblock prints are their smaller size, complex compositions, the expensive pigments used in their printing (including hand-rubbed metallic or mother-of-pearl pigments), the use of luxurious paper, and the use of poetic inscriptions on almost all prints. Like commercial woodblock prints of the Edo period many surimono were designed by ukiyo-e artists such as Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849). The surimono published for the first time in this important catalog lay hidden in the Frank Lloyd Wright Archives at Taliesin West, Scottsdale, Arizona until their rediscovery in the mid-1980’s.

Discover more about this book in our Catalog.

Adoption Type: Build and Access the Collection