“A Girl Thing VII” Ceramic Mug 11oz

Description

“A Girl Thing”

So, after you have poured yourself a mug of coffee, coco or tea at the beginning of the day, during your break, or just creating a moment for yourself, the view on the Japanese print of your mug will elevate your day. All seven depict women in their daily life. Enjoy “A Girl Thing”!! The 15 oz is our favorite. You will appreciate the aesthetics, craftsmanship and artistic value of these pieces of art from a lost era. Ukiyo-e is about the cycle of life, about birth, suffering, death, and rebirth, and meanwhile there is so much to enjoy!!!

Ukiyo-e is a genre of Japanese art during the “Edo-era”; a period from 1603 til 1868 when the Tokugawa shogunate was in power and had its seat in Edo – nowadays Tokyo. The art contains mostly woodblock prints and paintings and became very popular in the European artworld at the end of the nineteenth century. Western artists were intrigued by the original use of color, outline, realistic rendering and innovative asymmetrical compositions. “Japonism” had influence on impressionism and Jugendstil. Van Gogh had a huge collection of Ukiyo-e pictures.

Edo’s rapid economic growth gave the lower merchant class the option to indulge in the entertainments of kabuki theater, geisha, and courtesans of the sole licensed red-light district, the “Yoshiwara”. Originally Ukiyo is a combination of uki – which means sadness- and yo – means life. It reflects the Buddhist concept of life, involving a cycle of birth, suffering, death, and rebirth. However, during the early Edo period, another ideograph similarly pronounced as uki came into usage, which means “to float”. So, while one still can see the Ukiyo philosophy as “going with the flow in a floating world”, for many it evoked through the years an imagined universe of wit, stylishness, and extravagance, which the connotations of naughtiness, hedonism, and transgression. Ukiyo-e (the “e” stands for “picture”) depicted female beauties (bijin), kabuki actors and sumo wrestlers, but also scenes from history, folk tales, travel scenes, landscapes, flora, fauna, and erotica (shunga).

Kitagawa Utamaro(1753-1806)
In our Ukiyo-e products we use work from Kitagawa Utamaro, who became especially famous because of his portraits of beautiful women. It is not uncommon for Kitagawa Utamaro to use ordinary women as models in addition to courtesans. He usually depicted women in their daily life: they brush their hair, make themselves beautiful, think, etc. Another important theme in the prints is love.

Portraits we used are:
1. “Midnight: Mother and sleepy child” from the collection “Fuzoku Bijin Tokai” (women’s daily customs).
2. “Courtesans, Shinohara and Kamuro of Tsuruya.”
3. “Washing Day”
4. “Seru No Koku”. Google translation: “Letting”
5. “Three Courtesans”
6. “Fishing”
7. “Three Beauties of the Kwansei Period”

Specifications
Coffee, coco, tea or water. Morning, evening or somewhere in between – this mug’s for you! Microwave and dish wash with care.

.: White ceramic
.: 11 oz (0.33 l)
.: Rounded corners
.: C-handle
.: Lead and BPA-free