Excerpt from 150 Rare Japanese Color Prints: Collected by Professor John Getz, New York City; To Be Sold by His Order, Wednesday Evening, January Fourteenth at Eight-Fifteen It was not until near the close of the seventeenth century that the costly painted scrolls, emanating chiefly from artists of the Mikado's Court, were supplemented by something within the reach of the less wealthy classes. This field was opened up by l\ioronobu with his simple black prints that were sometimes colored by hand. Later came the Urushi-ye or lacquer prints, when lacquer was mixed with the pig ments to give added brilliancy. After these came the first true color prints, done by'masanobu in two colors (red and green), called beni - ye. These were improved upon by Harunobu, who designed his work for more than two color-blocks; under his guidance and that of Shunsho, the art of color printing was brought to perfection. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.