The Printer's Eye

Edwin Grabhorn (18891968), co-founder of the Grabhorn Press, Northern California's premier letterpress printer, was a pioneer American collector of Japanese prints. The Grabhorn prints in the collection of the Asian Art Museum comprise the upper echelons of the original collection. The collection includes a superb selection of early monochrome and hand-colored ukiyo-e prints by Sugimura Jihei, Torii Kiyonobu, Okumura Masanobu and others, from the seminal decades of the woodblock print production in the late 1600s and early 1700s. Japanese Prints from the Grabhorn Collectionmarks the first time these prints are being published in quantity for a wide audience. Leading scholars David Waterhouse and Julia Meech provide in-depth looks at the prints in their Japanese contexts and at Grabhorn's role as a print collector. Large full-color reproductions all 140 of the Grabhorn prints in the Asian Art Museum's collection are accompanied by brief entries by Melissa Rinne.

Melissa M. Rinne is Assistant Curator of Japanese Art at the Asian Art Museum.

David Waterhouse's many publications include Early Japanese Prints in the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Julia Meech's many publications include Japonisme Comes to America: The Japanese Impact on the Graphic Arts 1876—1925.