Mie River at Yokkaichi

The artwork

A gust of wind snatches a traveller's hat, and he chases it along the bank, while another on the little bridge pulls his cloak tight. You receive it printed on handmade Amalfi paper, in a handmade frame.

• The blue of the river, the willow bent by the wind and the pale tones of the reeds.
• An image full of movement and humour that brings a study or an entrance hall to life.
• A gift for anyone who loves travel stories and Japan.

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, with fifty-three post stations where travellers stopped to eat and sleep.

Yokkaichi was a station near Ise Bay, and here the road crossed the Mie River on a bridge of planks. Hiroshige chooses an ordinary moment, the kind that happens to every traveller: the wind, the hat flying off, the chase to catch it. It was precisely this attention to everyday life that made the series so popular in its own time. Our reproduction comes from the impression in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

In a study or an entrance hall it makes whoever looks at it smile. An original gift for anyone who travels.

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