The Unbelievable Tale of the Ukiyo-e Prints

Here I’m going to tell you about the first full collection I’ve been given to catalogue, and how there turned out to be much more to it than met the eye.

When I finished in the L-shaped room, my manager recommended a few other collections containing artworks that I could work on. These were part of a survey she did about a year ago. She prioritised specific ones that had been given little attention up until this point. I was especially drawn to one that was simply called ‘Japanese drawings’. It seemed very manageable within the time I have left, and besides, I’ve always loved Japanese art. The prints were tucked away in the stacks, in a black solander box. As soon as I looked at them I realised two things. Firstly, they were not drawings – they were woodblock prints, similarly to those I’d seen recently in the British Museum. Secondly, at present they were hidden from people who would really want to see them.


From Sadahide's Sugawara Tragedy

Helpful notes that accompanied the prints gave me their titles, artists, and rough dates – they were created during the late 18^th and early 19^th centuries. They are ukiyo-e prints; ukiyo-e translates as ‘pictures of the floating world’. The term ‘floating world’ refers to the life of hedonism and indulgence lived by the merchant class for whom prints like these were mass-produced. They depict all kind of subjects including landscapes, beautiful women, flora and fauna and scenes from folk tales. Hokusai’s ‘Great Wave off Kanagawa’ is a famous example. Another popular preoccupation is kabuki, or classical Japanese theatre, which is the subject of the Brotherton’s prints.



Last print in Sugawara.
 

There are two sets, each depicting a series of scenes from popular plays of their period. Hiroshige’s Chushingura tells the story of the 47 Ronin, warriors who avenge the wrongful death of their lord; our set comprises 11 prints. Sagahide’s The Sugawara Tragedy is about the life of Sugawara no Michizane, a court noble accused of plotting to seize the throne; there are 10 prints in this set. In real life the colours look even more lush and beautiful, and fortunately, our sets of prints are in pretty good condition, so that the colours are still vibrant.

I found researching the prints very hard going, as there didn’t seem to be much information on these particular sets. The only good source I found was online information from a book from the 1920s called ‘A Guide to Japanese Prints’ by Basil Stewart, which seemed to be a seminal work. I noticed that this book described both sets of prints as ‘very rare’. Surely, if this was the case, it was important to know for sure?

From Chushingura. 

As luck would have it, someone could provide me with an answer. The conservator put me on to a local person, Ellis, who just so happens to be a leading expert on Japanese prints. He lectured at the university for 25 years and wrote a book for the British Museum http://www.japansociety.org.uk/16570/japanese-prints-ukiyo-e-in-edo-1700-1900/ . I e-mailed him and he came in the next day to have a look at the collection.

He was very interested in the prints and took a lot of photos. He told me that the Sadahide prints were special, as he knew of no other complete set (the Hiroshige set was a bit less remarkable). The Toyoharu was also valuable due to its age, although unfortunately someone had had the bright idea of folding it over to get it in the box, which means there’s a crease down the middle. I’ve now found it a new box and it is in line to be flattened out, possibly through humidifying.

The big news, though, was the provenance of the prints. All I knew was that they used to belong to a collector called Norman Walker who lectured in botany at the university, and were presented to us by a Mrs Redman King. However, Ellis knew about Mrs Redman King’s collection because it had been deposited in the Leeds City Museum, until, in quite a scandalous auction in the 1980s, the bulk of it was sold at way below its market value. Our prints, however, were gifted to us in memory of Norman Walker. The exciting thing, though, is exactly who left the prints to Norman Walker. Turns out it was Basil Stewart! Meaning the information I’d been reading online was actually making reference to the very prints in front of me.

I was absolutely thrilled to hear this news. Ellis suggested that the Brotherton considers depositing the prints with the V&A, and I would be delighted if this decision were taken. The V&A has the largest collection of Japanese prints in the UK, and if our prints could stay there (even as a deposit) it would make them much more accessible, as no one would think of looking for them in our library. I’ve sent the suggestion on to my supervisors and will ask them next week what they think will happen, or whom to pass all this information on to.

I do feel something of a sense of pride, considering I had always suspected that the prints were rare and after chasing it up had found that my instincts were true. However, it is all a bit ironic, because I’m spending a lot of time cataloguing them and taking photographs (more on this next time), and if they leave, I don’t know if this might all be for nothing… Still, if they do stay for at least a good while longer (as is most likely!) it’ll mean the staff can find them, and information about them, easily and they will no longer be hidden on a top shelf on one of the stacks, their true value undetected!

Adventures on the road!

I’ve had quite a long break from my blog to do Christmas, write an essay for my uni course and take two trips away - more on this in a minute! Things are really heating up from now on, as I’ll have two uni modules plus will be spending time working on my application for postgraduate study, keeping up with the latest ARA news, etc. However, I really want to continue this blog until my internship ends in mid-March, so I’ll give it a go!

I’m back in the Brotherton library and it’s all change for me. Thursday 15^th was my last day in the Art Store and I’m really sad about it! I have to move on to other things, plus my work there is pretty much done - I’ve found all the artworks I’m aware of. In fact, I’m pretty amazed because, on my very last day, the fantastic Collections Assistant from the gallery team found the remaining group of four drawings I’d been looking for for months! I had just enough time to make records for them all. Which means, thanks to her, I now have a full house!

As of next week, I’ll be starting to learn how to digitise artworks… I thought I’d only be doing this for a couple of days, but have now been told that it’ll be for two (short) days per week for 4-5 weeks! I’m freaking out a bit, as I’ll have to work with what are, effectively, giant cameras for most of the time, and while I can handle software, machines are, on the whole, not my friends. When I was a receptionist, the fax machine went wrong literally every single time I tried to use it, so who can tell what will happen when I try and take control of a giant camera. However, I’m still really eager to find out about digitisation, and it will be useful to add this to my experience, so I’ll give it a shot…

I was all geared up to tell you about my new project - cataloguing a whole collection of Japanese prints! - but I feel I must leave that for next time so I can tell you about my latest archiving-related trips away, both of which took place in the past two weeks. 

First, I went down to London to the Digital Preservation Coalition’s student conference.

http://www.dpconline.org/events/details/84-dpc-wiwik2015?xref=98

This was in the British Library’s posh conference centre, which gave me the added bonus of visiting the library, which I’d never done before. The building was a lot more modern than I’d imagined, and all the different levels, eg an upper and a lower ground, made it a bit confusing! Also, security was really tight and I had my bag searched (embarrassing as I had my overnight stuff in there!). Was great to have a quick look around though, and I visited their Gothic exhibition, the highlight for me being the two pages from Mary Shelley’s original manuscript of Frankenstein, one of my favourite books (I nearly cried!).

The conference was all day and packed with presentations from practitioners from major organisations. It was well worth going out for, as only in London would I have heard talks by archivists from the Parliamentary archives, the BBC and the British Library. I found the last two particularly interesting. Deon Cotgrove, operational manager of the BBC’s archive centre, talked about his huge, ongoing task of archiving BBC content from across the years. This really took me back to my visit to the Yorkshire Film Archive, where I learned about the need to migrate content from near-obsolete tape formats and the decisions they had to make about what material was suitable for the costly process of digitisation. Look at a video about the BBC’s archive here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/academy/technology/broadcast-technology/television/article/art20130704121742520

The talk by Helen Hockx-Yu from the British Library was also interesting. She is managing a project to archive web content, in keeping with the ‘Legal Deposit’ act that came into effect only in 2013. She and her team crawl the web selecting and archiving websites significant to researchers, ones that provide important information about British life and culture at any one time in history. Snapshots of these are then made available to view on the UK web archive: take a look! 

http://www.webarchive.org.uk/ukwa/

I hadn’t known about this project, so this talk was quite enlightening.

As to the rest of the day; I’d say I was confused by some of the more technical aspects of digital archiving, and a bit overwhelmed by the sheer number of acronyms! However, the conference was aimed at PG students who would naturally be a bit further on in their knowledge than I am, and I did take notes so will be Googling aplenty to find out what all the terms mean. (I hear the OAIS is hugely important…)

So - my second trip was to the University of Aberystwyth, Wales, to find out about their postgraduate course in Archive Administration. I won’t make this post too much longer but I can say I had a brilliant time, and really was pleasantly surprised. Most people I’d spoken to about the town had described it as ‘isolated’, with one person saying she’d heard ‘you have to drive for two hours to find the nearest Topshop’! In fact it was nothing like this; there was a good mix of high street and independent shops and a few lovely cafes (or ‘caffis’ in Welsh!). From what I’ve found out, the transport links aren’t that bad either, and the railway station is in the centre of town. It was a bit cold for the beach but I explored the town and the rather quirky ‘Ceredigion Museum’ and ate in a nice veggie restaurant. It was just all really beautiful, with all the good things about a seaside town but none of the tacky elements! Plus the mountainous location and the ease of getting to Snowdonia or just out for fabulous walks.

The uni was no less impressive. When I first got there, it seemed tiny and I was like, ‘um… what?’ - until I realised this was the smaller, separate ‘Llanbadarn’ part of campus and not the whole thing! Once I got used to the fact the university was up a steep hill and kind of cut off, I began to really like it; there are things about it that are (I’m afraid to say) definitely better than Leeds. There seems to be a friendlier, small-community feel - plus the cafés are better (v important to me obvs!). Also, the National Library of Wales is round the corner, and, on the main part of campus, there is a massive, amazing arts centre with theatres, galleries, an arty shop, nice café, cinema… Wow is all I can say.

A tutor kindly gave up her time to answer my many questions about the course and show me round, and I was happy with pretty much everything I heard. I’ve now made up my mind to apply for a place. I’ve always loved Wales, the course is right for me and a complete change of scene would really do me good. Since I announced this on Facebook, a few people have commented that family members went there and loved it - and my own cousin did too, which I’m sure will help. I’m starting work on my application asap - cross all digits for me!