Antique Japanese Daoist Ukiyo-e Woodblock Print
Item Details
An antique Japanese Daoist ukiyo-e woodblock print on rice paper. The print depicts a figure wearing nothing but a skirt and mantel crafted from leaves. He holds a sun-mirror (陽燧 yangsui) in his left hand and a moon-mirror (方諸 fangzhu) in his right. Together these mirrors represent the complementary forces of yang and yin, respectively. Also denoting these Daoist concepts is the taijitu (太极图) symbol, commonly called a yin yang symbol in the West, above his head. Surrounding it are the bagua (八卦, literally ‘eight symbols’), trigrams with ‘broken’ and ‘unbroken’ lines representing yin and yang. Each trigram represents a fundamental principle of reality according to Daoist philosophy. The cleaver resting nearby may identify the figure as Zhuang Zhou, the Daoist philosopher and author of the Zhuangzi, or a character from this book. Zhuang Zhou relates a story in the Zhuangzhi of how the Dao (‘the Way’) was revealed to Prince Wen Hui by a cook using his cleaver has a metaphor. The print was made with three color blocks of red, green and black. The work is framed in a wood frame.
Dimensions
- image size: 9.5″ × 24″
Item #
16CLT048-069
