Hiroshi Yoshida- Japanese Woodcut

Found this lovely postcard of Hiroshi Yoshida's woodcut "Kameido Bridge" from 1927 from a darling new little shop down in Echo Park (in Los Angeles) named Stories , which carries a wonderful selection of books, postcards, random little gifts, and has a small cafe inside.

Seriously cute little bookshop with a great selection of used and new books- I could have walked away with many armfuls of great reference/inspiration books that I'd just use to post to this blog all day, plus they had such a great selection of collections of short stories and just nice random LA stuff (cute retro dish towels, day of the dead stuff, etc). They do poetry readings and lots of events there too!

http://www.storiesla.com/

Anyway, I couldn't not buy this postcard because it was so beautiful- the colors, art deco architecture in the bridge, and delicate linework are just wonderful! Enjoy!

Japanese watercolors

Found these in a stationary store in Japantown, San Francisco

"Plovers" Shoko Uemura 1976

"Fawn," Shoko Kawasaki 1943

"Green Pond" Seiho Takeuchi, Early period Showa

Tsurutaro Kataoka, 1998

"Snow in Morning" Goun Nishimura 1922-25

Japanese Art Nouveau Postcards

I came across this small collection of postcards for sale and was just amazed at some of the beautiful Art Nouveau Japanese images it featured... just the sense of design, color and composition all are things that caught my eye.

more links:
Art of the Japanese Postcard: MFA Boston
Curved line aesthetic in Japanese art
Assorted images

Umbrellas Viewed from Above
Takehisa Yumeji 

Female Nude Seated in Water
1906, by Ichijô Narumi

 Ducks Swimming Upstream

Uzaki Sumikazi

Woman with Umbrella
Ichijo Narumi

Peacock on a Wall

Wada Eisaku