Daily Archives: October 22, 2023

The Gardens Trust is back with a two part online series on Hisui Sugiura: Botanical Illustrator and Graphic Designer, on Tuesdays, October 31 and November 7, from 6 am – 7:30 Eastern, but don’t worry – a recording of the sessions will be made available soon after the live talk and is accessible for a week, to watch at your convenience. Tickets are available through Eventbrite, £8 for both or £5 each. Registration links are HERE

In recent years, the work of Hisui Sugiura (1876-1965), a pioneering graphic designer, has been admired both within and outside Japan. In the 1920s and 1930s, his iconic poster designs and magazine covers for Mitsukoshi department store and the new Ginza subway seemed to capture the zeitgeist of a rapidly modernizing society. Less attention has been given to his highly accomplished botanical illustrations which closely reflected his own artistic development and remained a constant source of inspiration throughout a long and productive career. He successfully hybridized Japanese and Western techniques, filling numerous sketchbooks with realistic natural history and botanical illustrations, before offering more stylized depictions of plants in an album of woodblock prints known as Hisui Hyakkafu [One Hundred Flowers], and finally developing abstract floral motifs and designs which he incorporated skillfully into his graphic designs.

Utilizing a recently discovered cache of preparatory studies for Hisui Hyakkafu, these two richly illustrated talks follow Hisui on his artistic journey: his approach to plants and art, his compositional techniques, and place within the broader botanical art traditions of Japan. Illustration is Hypericum monogynum, attrib. Hisui Sugiura (非水 杉浦), early 20th century. Ink and watercolour on washi. Reproduced courtesy of the Shadowlands Archive.