Ancient Japanese craftsmen were celebrated for their one-of-a-kind process and distinctive aesthetic. Their woodblock prints have become a widely recognized as an iconic form of Japanese art. Along with paintings, prints produced from the 17th century through the 19th century. Woodblock printing was popularized in mainstream Japan during the EDO period, an era denoting 1603 through 1868.
In the late 19th century, Japanese aesthetics and craftsmanship overtook Paris, inspiring a movement that would radically transform Europe’s visual culture. The Japanese patterns tradition quickly became one of France’s most enduring aesthetic movements. For more than 40 years, it inspired the furthest reaches of the design world. It also morphed into other aesthetic movements in the late 19th and early 20th centuries: Art Nouveau and Art Deco, Modernism and many more, upto this current day.
These trends in design are often erroneously thought to have been entirely creations of the West but in reality impossible without previous exposure to Japanese art and design. “They have taught us,” the jeweler Lucien Falize once said of the Japanese EDO period design, “the poetry of this world.”