nishiki-e

Nishiki-e (錦絵; "brocade picture") is a type of Japanese multi-coloured woodblock printing; the technique is used primarily in ukiyo-e. It was invented in the 1760s, and perfected and popularized by the printmaker Suzuki Harunobu, who produced many nishiki-e prints between 1765 and his death five years later. Previously, most prints had been in black-and-white, coloured by hand, or coloured with the addition of one or two colour ink blocks. A nishiki-e print is created by carving a separate woodblock for every colour, and using them in a stepwise fashion. An engraver by the name of Kinroku is credited with the technical innovations that allowed so many blocks of separate colours to fit together perfectly on the page, in order to create a single complete image. This style and technique is also known as Edo-e (江戸絵, edo-e), referring to Edo, the name for Tokyo before it became the capital.¶

The text above is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Nishiki-e”, available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 licence.¶

nishiki-e is Japanese multi-colored woodblock printing, according to the structured record cited below. This entry was generated automatically from that record and has not yet been reviewed by a person familiar with the tradition.¹¶

The source record links this tradition to 7 external registers, which can be verified through the citation.¹¶