The Waitress Ohisa of the Takashimaya c. 1792 - 1793

Katsukawa Shunchō’s woodblock print depicts the waitress Ohisa using delicate lines and blocks of color. This isn't painting or sculpture in the Western sense, but a commercial printmaking technique known as Ukiyo-e, meaning "pictures of the floating world," which reflects the rise of urban culture in Edo-period Japan. The production of such prints was a collaborative endeavor, involving the artist who designed the image, a woodblock carver, a printer, and a publisher. Each artisan specialized in a different part of the process. The carver would painstakingly translate the artist's design onto wooden blocks, and then the printer would apply ink and transfer the image onto paper. The materiality is humble, but the effect is not. The texture of the paper, the registration of the colors, all speak to the highly developed skills of the anonymous craftspeople involved. The print’s beauty belies the intense labor involved in its production. This reminds us that all art, even that which appears effortlessly elegant, is the product of many hands and complex social forces.