絵本三家栄種 3巻
This is an 1771 Japanese ehon picture book in three volumes, illustrated by Kitao Shigemasa and published by Nakamura Kohei and one other publisher in Edo for a general readership. Its pictures are monochrome woodblock prints with light colour washes, showing crowded street and interior scenes of townspeople, courtesans and attendants in kimono, with handwritten Japanese text in the upper margins. A designer might take from them the economical ink line, the layered compositions of figures against architecture, and the calligraphic captions set into open space.
