KYOKARAKAMI, [JAPANESE PATTERN PAPER

Kara nagatezuri mokuhan monyo [Kara-cho Designs for Hand-Printed Woodcut Pattern Paper.] Edited by Ansou Hisao.  Preface by Osaragi Jiro.  Two volumes.  Contents includes: 2 ff. prefaces, 102 sheets of decorated papers, printed in colours from the original woodblocks on Kurotani paper, sheet size 390 x 510 mm.  Text fascicles loosely inserted in each volume (each 16 pp., with collotype illustrations; small 4to., self-wraps., secured with cord, as issued).  Large folio, loose in original publisher's purple silk-covered wooden cases.  Tokyo: [Bijutsu Shuppan-sha], 1966-1967. One of 120 copies.  A special publication reproducing kyokarakami  (hand-printed woodcut pattern paper) from actual woodblock specimens from the firm Karacho, the oldest surviving studio producing these papers by hand.  Founded in Kyoto in the early seventeenth century, Karacho filled the tremendous demand during the beginning of the Edo period to decorate paper doors (fusuma), walls, ceilings and folding screens, in