If one were to ask what makes a Japanese woodblock print special or valuable or rare, it would be hard to come up with a single, definitive answer. There are some common factors, of which condition is predominant, but there are many other factors of equal or greater importance. It would be pleasing to say that beauty or skill were paramount but sadly this is not always the case.
As with so many things, a final judgement on the 'worth' of a print is a mixture of many different factors. Balancing these contributions is quite subjective and will also vary from auction house to auction house and from collector to collector. Fashions change, rarity shifts with time and scholarship, consensus is affected by events - like a major retrospective at a national museum - which force scholars and collectors to reassess an artist or a movement. For example, throughout the nineteenth and most of the twentieth century, ukiyo-e collectors and commentators dismissed the work of the late Edo period as 'decadent', giving the greatest emphasis and scholarship to the 'classical period', ie prints from the the seventeenth and

So, what to look for. Condition remains paramount - within reason. It is pretty well impossible to find eighteenth century prints in pristine condition. The fugitive vegetable colours mean that even the best prints will have faded disastrously from their original state. The age of these prints means that greater handling and exposure will have had a major and detrimental effect. Even with highly collectible artists, if a print is torn, trimmed, scuffed, faded and creased its value will plummet to almost nothing. For nineteenth century artists it is preferable that the print be untrimmed or at least not trimmed into the image. This is more rare than most people imagine - the best preserved ukiyo prints were stored in albums and ironically these were trimmed to shape when they were bound. The crispness of the print is also important: the earlier in the edition, the sharper the lines on the wooden block will be and hence the sharper the lines andthe edges on the print. This is what is meant when dealers refer to 'early editions' and an early edition will also potentially have different




It is important then, with all print artists, to get early editions, as little trimmed as possible and in the best condition possible - an example of a pristine print is the Kunichika shown to the bottom right. Some damage when working with fragile finite resources is inevitable. In general when collecting it is necessary to make a judgement of the value of a piece - its condition against its rarity and the beauty of the piece itself. An important, rare and beautiful print

At the end of the day, experience and personal preference is what distinguishes the purchases a collector makes. A little experience and some sensible caution are the basics, after that, the thrill of collecting is in the end the acquisition of a very personal knowledge about a very personal response to art. But do also beware of cheap deals and vague wording… the word ‘original’ is sometimes not enough.