Serizawa Katazome and Mingei Stencil-Dye Graphics × Ukiyo-e Woodblock Prints

Ukiyo-e is carved line, urban pleasure and diagonal drama; Serizawa is a stencil edge, rural work and calm panel grids.

From the research on Serizawa Katazome and Mingei Stencil-Dye Graphics

Mix them and make something Serizawa Katazome and Mingei Stencil-Dye Graphics Ukiyo-e Woodblock Prints

A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from Serizawa Katazome and Mingei Stencil-Dye Graphics, their arrangement from Ukiyo-e Woodblock Prints, the finish from Ukiyo-e Woodblock Prints. Not a real work, and not an image of either style.

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.

Serizawa Katazome and Mingei Stencil-Dye Graphics Ukiyo-e Woodblock Prints

Type from Serizawa Katazome and Mingei Stencil-Dye Graphics: Hand-lettering
Ornamented display
Colour from Serizawa Katazome and Mingei Stencil-Dye Graphics: Earth & mineral
Flat fields
Form from Serizawa Katazome and Mingei Stencil-Dye Graphics: Stylised figuration
Rounded & pill
Composition from Ukiyo-e Woodblock Prints: Dynamic asymmetry
Diagonal axis
Surface from Ukiyo-e Woodblock Prints: Carved line
Paper & letterpress bite

The type

Open fonts standing in for each style’s own type, which is often hand-drawn or commercial.

Display · Serizawa Katazome and Mingei Stencil-Dye Graphics

Ours

Shippori Mincho, standing in for Hand-cut stencil kana and kanji, dyed together with the picture, for calendar month names, book titles and inscriptions

Text · Serizawa Katazome and Mingei Stencil-Dye Graphics

Japanese folk-craft graphic design made by cutting paper stencils and dyeing through a rice-paste resist. Figures, tools, houses, plants and kana or kanji are cut as one stencil, so letters and pictures share the same soft, hand-cut edge and sit as flat fields of earth, indigo and bingata red on undyed cloth or washi. Serizawa used it for calendars, book covers, screens and picture books, setting small everyday scenes in grids of panels or repeating them across the cloth.

Shippori Mincho; Serizawa Katazome and Mingei Stencil-Dye Graphics used Hand-cut stencil kana and kanji, dyed together with the picture, for calendar month names, book titles and inscriptions and Moji-e (文字絵), letters built from figures and objects, collected in Serizawa Keisuke no moji-e, san

The colours

The ground and leading colours come from Serizawa Katazome and Mingei Stencil-Dye Graphics, with a counter-accent from Ukiyo-e Woodblock Prints. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.

Serizawa Katazome and Mingei Stencil-Dye Graphics Ukiyo-e Woodblock Prints

#efe6d2 ground · 36%
#2b2622 ink · 14%
#d9a635 accent · 18%
#c64a2d accent · 14%
#1f3a5f accent · 10%
#6b7a3a accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #efe6d2;
  --ink: #2b2622;
  --accent-1: #d9a635;
  --accent-2: #c64a2d;
  --accent-3: #1f3a5f;
  --accent-4: #6b7a3a;
  --font-display: "Shippori Mincho", serif;
  --font-text: "Shippori Mincho", serif;
}

Use it with care

Serizawa Katazome and Mingei Stencil-Dye Graphics: Katazome and Okinawan bingata are living crafts: bingata is an Okinawan (Ryukyuan) tradition, carried on by dye houses such as the Shiroma family, and is protected as an intangible cultural property, so credit Okinawa and its makers when borrowing its colours and motifs, and do not sell printed or generated imitations as hand-dyed katazome or bingata. Mainland mingei collecting of Okinawan and Korean crafts in the 1930s and 1940s is now read critically against Japan's colonial rule over Korea and its treatment of annexed Okinawa, which is one more reason to name Okinawan makers rather than present bingata as Serizawa's invention. Serizawa's and Yunoki's designs are authored works held by their museums: work in the manner rather than copying a calendar or screen. His Buddhist subjects, such as the 1939 scroll of the priest Hōnen, are devotional images, not decoration. Kana and kanji must be real, correct text checked by a fluent reader, never pseudo-script used as texture.