Kitchen Scene 台所美人だいどころびじん

Description

This woodblock print was made by the Edo period ukiyo-e artist Kitagawa Utamaro. Utamaro is known for his one-person portraits of beauties, mainly courtesans, but this somewhat atypical work features a group of ordinary women.
The four women surround a kitchen stove. The woman on the bottom right is blowing into a bamboo pipe. Another lady frowns at the billowing smoke as she approaches the kettle armed with a teacup. She seems to be reflexively ducking her head from the smoke. On the left side, we see one woman peeling an eggplant and another drying dishes with a child on her back. Utamaro has taken a snapshot of daily life. He has discovered the beauty within scenes of women engrossed in household chores.
This casual scene is rendered using extremely elaborate printing techniques. Mica powder is used to imbue the shifting colors of the iron kettle and stove with a metallic appearance, for instance, while an embossing technique known as 'karazuri', or 'empty printing', gives the rivets a three-dimensional appearance. This opulence splendidly contrasts with the everyday motifs of the picture itself.

This scene of daily life was printed with colored mica powder to reproduce the textures of the metal kitchen implements.