About This Print
A beautiful composition consisting of the characters 放下 above a separately printed irregularly shaped overturned black bowl with two splotches of gold. The overturned black bowl was separately printed and then laminated to a heavy sheet of fine cream-colored paper. The bowl stands out in relief, looking to be deeply embossed (see detail below), but there is no sign of embossing on the verso.
In regards to these separately printed objects, Daniel Tretiak in his book "The Life and Works of Haku Maki" quotes a friend of Maki's as saying "Once Maki sensei told me that he had difficulties in making prints without any black ink dots in the white space, and he found this new technique - cutting the printed bowl and pasting it on the paper. He said it was a very happy way for him to make clean prints successfully. So, I think he made blocks, printed each image, cut each image and pasted it on the clean paper with his unique technique. As to the characters, I believe them to be stenciled on the print."1
The characters that Maki has placed on this print are 放下, hōge, which is a Zen term for casting off one's attachments.
Print Details
| IHL Catalog | #1982 |
| Title | Zen-2 |
| Artist | Maki Haku (1924-2000) |
| Signature |  |
| Seal |  白巻 Haku Maki |
| Publication Date | 1995/1999 |
| Publisher | self-published (39/111) |
| Printer | self-printed |
| Impression | excellent |
| Colors | excellent |
| Condition | excellent |
| Genre | sosaku-hanga (creative print) |
| Miscellaneous | |
| Format | |
| H x W Paper | 16 x 8 in. (21.7 x 14.6 cm) |
| H x W Image | 14 7/8 x 6 3/4 in. (17 x 11.9 cm) area within the rectangular "plate" line. |
| Collections This Print | |
| Reference Literature |
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