The bold and colourful woodblock prints of Jinta Hirayama's Japanese Firework Illustrations turn the trade catalogue of a Japanese fireworks company into some of the most striking graphic art of their age.
Founded in Yokohama in 1877, the Hirayama Fireworks Co. sold its wares overseas through illustrated catalogues. Its designs were cut as ukiyo-e prints, in the same tradition as Hokusai, Hiroshige, and the great artists of the Floating World. Each firework is captured at the moment it bursts – a shower of shapes and colour against a deep black background, rendered in the clean line and flat colour of the traditional woodblock style.
From the 1880s onwards, Hirayama's catalogues set down different styles of Japanese fireworks using a craft that turned them from commercial documents into works of art. He was the first Japanese citizen to obtain a US patent for his designs, leaving behind a record of hanabi at its height: the fleeting spectacle, held fast in one of Japan's oldest art forms.
This edition presents a facsimile of the woodblock plates in their original sequence from the 1883 catalogue, alongside additional writings on the history of pyrotechnics and Japanese printmaking. It reframes fireworks not simply as entertainment but as objects of craftsmanship, design, and cultural significance.
Book Features:
- Facsimile plates reproduced from the Hirayama Fireworks Company's late-nineteenth-century catalogue.
- Woodblock-printed illustrations of traditional Japanese hanabi (fire flowers).
- Designs by Jinta Hirayama, the first Japanese citizen to hold a US patent for his fireworks.
- Ukiyo-e prints in the style of Hokusai and Hiroshige.
- A unique gift and coffee table book for lovers of Japanese art, print design, and fireworks.