Style combination · Contrasts
Rinpa × Vienna Secession
Both set flat figures and pattern on gold, but the Secession locks them into frames and grids while Rinpa leaves the gold open and lets one motif drift across it; decide whether the gold should be a frame or a field.
01
What each style brings
Each part of the design comes from the style with the stronger say in it, and each style gives at least two.
Rinpa & Saga-bon Vienna Secession
- Type from Vienna Secession
- Colour from Rinpa
- Form from Vienna Secession
- Composition from Rinpa
- Surface from Rinpa
02
The type
Open fonts standing in for each style’s own type, which is often hand-drawn or commercial.
Display · Vienna Secession
Luxe
Federant; Vienna Secession used Alfred Roller's elongated, interlocking block capitals and Koloman Moser's geometric display lettering
Text · Rinpa
A Kyoto school of decorative design that revived the poetry and court painting of the Heian period, begun around 1600 by the calligrapher Hon'ami Kōetsu and the painter Tawaraya Sōtatsu and carried on less by teaching than by admiration across generations: Ogata Kōrin, Sakai Hōitsu, Kamisaka Sekka. A few plants, waves or birds are enlarged, simplified, cropped and repeated across open gold or silver grounds, colour is pooled wet into wet (tarashikomi), poems are brushed over decorated paper, and the same motifs pass to screens, fans, lacquer, kimono and the movable-type Saga-bon books.
Shippori Mincho; Rinpa used Kōetsu's brush hand and Saga-bon wooden movable type
03
The colours
The ground and leading colours come from Rinpa, with a counter-accent from Vienna Secession. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.
Rinpa & Saga-bon Vienna Secession
-
#c9a447ground · 36% -
#1c1a17ink · 14% -
#b0412eaccent · 18% -
#1f3f7aaccent · 14% -
#3b5e4aaccent · 10% -
#8e8f8aaccent · 8%
As CSS
:root {
--ground: #c9a447;
--ink: #1c1a17;
--accent-1: #b0412e;
--accent-2: #1f3f7a;
--accent-3: #3b5e4a;
--accent-4: #8e8f8a;
--font-display: "Federant", sans-serif;
--font-text: "Shippori Mincho", serif;
}Use it with care
Rinpa & Saga-bon: Poems on Rinpa works and Saga-bon pages are real Japanese texts: have any kana or kanji written or set and checked by a fluent reader, and never fill a design with pseudo-calligraphy as texture. Do not present a generated gold screen as a historical work or as a copy of a named National Treasure. A Kōrin-style plum or wave can be crest-like, but keep it free of any real family's, shrine's or temple's mon.
04
The two styles
05
More combinations
With Rinpa
- Kamon (Japanese Family Crests) Pairs well · Kōrin patterns reduce a plum or a wave to an emblem much as a mon does; pair a crest-like Rinpa motif with a large open ground for packaging, keeping it free of any real family's crest.
- Art Nouveau Pairs well · Kamisaka Sekka was sent to Glasgow in 1901 and came back influenced by Art Nouveau, which he joined to Rinpa subjects; pair Rinpa's cropped irises and waves with Art Nouveau's floral lettering for a botanical label or poster.
- Ma & Wabi-sabi Aesthetics Contrasts · Both come from Kyoto's tea culture (Kōetsu also made Raku tea bowls), but wabi-sabi wants rough clay and empty paper where Rinpa wants gold leaf and malachite; one bare field can serve either, so choose the material that fills it.
- Japanese Postwar Modernism Pairs well · Tanaka Ikkō drew many 1960s–70s posters from Rinpa and has been called a 20th-century Rinpa artist, and in 2015 ten Japanese graphic designers made Rinpa posters, Hara Kenya's on real gold leaf: add a gold ground and a single cropped seasonal motif to a modernist grid for warmth and seasonality.
- Finnish Bold Print (Marimekko Modernism) Pairs well · Both enlarge a plant motif, crop it at the edge and repeat it across cloth; take Rinpa's metallic ground and pooled colour into a bold printed textile.
- Song–Ming Woodblock Book Typography (Songti / Mincho) Contrasts · The Ming/Mincho book letter is upright, separate and set square in a ruled grid; Saga-bon type is flowing kana linked across sorts on decorated paper. Use Mincho for running text and a Saga-bon-like hand for titles and poems.
- Ukiyo-e Woodblock Prints Contrasts · Ukiyo-e carves a keyline, prints in editions for the city and depicts actors and courtesans; Rinpa paints pooled colour on gold for a few patrons and depicts plants, waves and birds. Choose between the street print and the gilded screen before settling a Japanese look.
- Japonisme Contrasts · Japonisme learned Japan mostly from woodblock prints, with keylines and flat colour on paper, though Kōrin reached Louis Gonse and Siegfried Bing in the 1880s through Hōitsu's Kōrin hyakuzu, and Gonse's L'Art japonais (1883) ranked him among the best decorative artists; borrow Rinpa's open gold ground and repeated plant motif to give a Japonist layout more space and shine.
With Vienna Secession
- Art Nouveau Contrasts · Set French whiplash against the Viennese square to show the turn from organic to geometric ornament within one decorative idiom.
- Art Deco Pairs well · Carry the Secession's squares, chequers and gold into Deco's stepped geometry for a luxurious but disciplined look.
- Japanese Postwar Modernism Pairs well · Both reduce motifs to emblematic flat shapes in a calm field; combine them for elegant cultural posters.
- Glasgow Style Pairs well · Vienna learned from Glasgow in 1900; combine Mackintosh's attenuated verticals with Secession squares and gold for refined cultural branding.
- Josef Frank and Svenskt Tenn Botanical Prints Contrasts · Frank came out of Vienna, but his loose, asymmetric plant repeats are the opposite of the Secession's geometric, symmetrical ornament; compare a Wiener Werkstätte grid pattern with his free-growing trees.
- Nieuwe Kunst (Dutch Art Nouveau) Pairs well · Both pulled Art Nouveau toward geometry, symmetry and strict repetition in the same years; add Vienna's black, white and gold and its white margins to the Dutch earth-colour repeat for a more open page.
- Mir iskusstva Book Art Contrasts · Both enclose pictures in symmetrical frames, but Vienna squared the frame into grids and bars while the Russian book filled a wide border with folk and rococo motifs; pick geometric order or narrative ornament.
- Bezalel School Contrasts · Both put pictures inside symmetrical ornamental frames, but Vienna squared the frame into grids and bars while Bezalel filled it with Middle Eastern filigree, carpet and metalwork motifs.