Morning Mist at Mishima

The artwork

In the morning mist, travellers on horseback and in a palanquin leave Mishima, and behind them the trees and the shrine gate are only grey shadows. You receive it printed on handmade Amalfi paper, in a handmade frame.

• The greys and pale blues of the mist and the strong blues of the travellers in the foreground.
• A quiet, refined picture that brings calm to a bedroom or a study.
• A gift for anyone who loves hushed atmospheres.

It is one of the Fifty-Three Stations of the Tōkaidō, the series that made Utagawa Hiroshige (1797-1858), the best loved landscape artist of Japan, famous, published between 1833 and 1834. The Tōkaidō was the great road that linked Edo, today's Tokyo, with Kyoto: almost five hundred kilometres, with fifty-three post stations. Mishima was the station at the foot of the Hakone mountains, known for its great shrine. The gate glimpsed in the mist, called a torii, marks the entrance to a sacred place of Shinto, the traditional religion of Japan.

Hiroshige's trick is simple and brilliant: the near figures have black outlines and solid colours, the distant ones are printed without outlines, in a single light colour. So the eye sees the mist, even though it is not on the sheet. Our reproduction comes from the impression in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

In a bedroom or a study it brings the stillness of the early hours. An elegant, understated gift.

Unique quality material

Print on handmade Amalfi paper
Sheet size: 29 x 42 cm (11.4 x 16.5 in)
With frame: 31 x 44 cm (12.2 x 17.3 in)
Material: artwork printed on very fine handmade Amalfi paper with deckled edges
Frame: dark brown with gold fillet, handmade, with glass