In this relatively short and accessible volume filled with beautiful color illustrations, Christine Guth takes the reader on a tour of craft production practices in early modern Japan, the people involved, and the materials they worked with. Combining her expertise as an art historian, deftly reading the images dotted throughout the book, which come from woodblock prints and craft manuals or compendiums, with material culture studies, Guth expertly discusses crafts such as lacquerware, ceramics, fabric making and sewing, papermaking, woodwork, and metalwork. Themes that stand out in the study are the relationship between craftspeople and the natural environment, craft as an embodied practice, and innovation over static tradition. Given the ubiquity of craft objects in early modern Japanese life, whether in the trousseau of a bride from the upper ranks of the aristocracy, in the ritual objects used in a Buddhist temple, or in the fabric that was worn by...

You do not currently have access to this content.