236 REPORT 1 OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1892. 



proofs down to the time of Papillon, who describes and figures thein 

 in the book before cited. 



That the method of plugging practiced by the Japanese wood-cut- 

 ters — evidently by square instead of round plugs — is the same as the 

 old European method is not to be wondered at in view of the identity 

 of the materials used. 



With these elementary factors of materials, tools, and appliances, the 

 similarity between Japanese and sixteenth century European wood. 

 cutting ends, however, and further examination discloses differences of 

 a very marked kind. 



it is well-known that the work of the old European wood-cutters is 

 essentially black-line facsimile, i. e., the reproduction, more or less 

 faithfully, of drawings in black lines, generally pen and ink drawings, 

 on a light ground. It was this limitation which threw the wood-cut out 

 of the race with the other reproductive arts, until it was enabled to 

 enter the lists again after it had been transformed into wood-en- 

 graving. The woodcutters and printers of Europe did, indeed, attempt 

 to produce color effects as early as 1457, this being the year in which 

 appeared Fust and Sehoeffer's Psalter, the first dated printed book, so 

 far as we know, and at the same time the first dated piece of color- 

 printing. This, however, was merely work of a decorative character. 

 The first pictures really printed in colors are Cranach's chiaroscuros, 

 the oldest of which are dated 150G, and, of works printed in positive 

 colors, Jost de Negker's portrait of Jacob Fugger, about 1512, and 

 Altdorfer's Beautiful Maria of Ratisbonne, about 1519. But of these 

 two kinds of productions, only the first, the chiaroscuros (clairobscurs, 

 Helldunkel) — that is to say, imitations of India ink and sepia drawings 

 and other monochromes — came largely iuto use during the sixteenth, 

 seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, while the attempts to introduce 

 printing from relief blocks in positive colors, although renewed from 

 time to time, never succeeded to any extent, so that it may be said even 

 to-day that chromoxylography is practiced only occasionally, except 

 for such coarse work as advertisements, show bills, etc.* 



The Japanese, as a matter of course, have also produced and still 

 produce facsimiles of drawings in black lines, but owing, possibly, to 

 the fact that their artists use the brush instead of the pen or some 

 still more unyielding point, they were soon led to attempt the repro- 

 duction of washed drawings, not only in black and grays, but also in 

 positive colors. Their earliest productions of this kind do not, indeed, 

 according to Prof. Fenollosa, go back beyond about the year 1715, t but 



* As these notes treat only of relief printing no account is taken here of chromo- 

 chalcography and chromolithography. 



tTkere is considerable variation in the statements found in books concerning tke 

 oldest specimens of Japanese color-printing. From Dr. Justus Briuckmann's Kunst 

 und Handwerk in Japan (Berlin, 1889, p. 222), we learn that these specimens, accord- 

 ing to a Japanese author, Sakakiwara, date from the year 1695, although ou p. 237 



