Moon Pine, Ueno

The artwork

A pine branch bends until it closes into a ring, and inside the ring, as if through a window, Hiroshige lets the landscape in. You receive it printed on handmade Amalfi paper, in a handmade frame.

• The brown of the trunk, the green of the needles and the blue of the water under the sky.
• A surprising, modern image, which gives character to a study or an entrance hall.
• A gift for anyone who loves nature, trees and Japan.

It belongs to the One Hundred Famous Views of Edo, the series that Utagawa Hiroshige (1797-1858), the best loved landscape artist of Japan, published between 1856 and 1858. Edo was the name of Tokyo until 1868, and its people had a passion: giving names to the oldest or most oddly shaped trees. Pines, which live long and grow into strange shapes, were the favourites.

This tree, on Ueno hill, was called the «Moon Pine» for its full, round shape, and because looking at it from different angles you could make out the phases of the moon. Some also called it the «Rope Pine», because the branch looks like a loop of rope. Hiroshige puts it in front of everything and lets the edges of the sheet cut it off: the trunk climbs on the left, the branch turns on itself, and inside the ring appear the water and the houses on the far bank. Our reproduction comes from the impression in the Brooklyn Museum in New York.

In a study or an entrance hall it is a picture you look at again and again. An original gift for anyone who loves trees.

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