Scenes are drawn to scale: the sofa is 84 in wide, the desk 60 in, the door 80 in tall. Switch sizes above to compare.
Step 1 — set the scale. Drag the slider until the gold bar on the photo is the height of a standard doorway (80 in / 203 cm). Every size you pick is then drawn true to life.
Step 2 — drag the print to where it would hang, and change size or frame above to compare.
Japanese Woodblock Prints
Young Woman Blowing a Glass Toy, c. 1792
Poppen o fuku musume, from Ten Studies in Female Physiognomy — Kitagawa Utamaro, published by Tsutaya Jūzaburō
From the Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, Japanese prints collection · 1792
$129Charged in USD at checkout; local currency shown for reference.
Source scan:LOC (Prints & Photographs Division, Japanese prints). Rights statement of the archive: “No known restrictions on publication. Ukiyo-e print by an artist who died before 1930; the impression itself was published before 1930 — public domain in the United States, Japan and the EU.” Original print: Kitagawa Utamaro, 1792, 1 print : woodcut, color.. Verified 2026-09-13.
This product is a new archival print made from a restored scan of that print. It is not an original antique and is not sold as one.
The story of this print
Utamaro invented the close-up. Before him, prints of beautiful women showed them full length; around 1792, working with the publisher Tsutaya Jūzaburō, he began a series of half-length portraits, Ten Studies in Female Physiognomy, and this is the sheet everyone knows from it. A young woman in a checked kimono of red and white lifts a poppen — a thin glass toy that pops when you blow into it — to her lips, her eyes down, her hair pinned with a comb. The ground was printed with mica in the first impressions, so she floated on silver.
The Library of Congress holds an early impression, the checks of the kimono sharp and the mica ground now toned to grey. The paper has darkened with age and we have kept that rather than bleaching it, cleaning the sheet and restoring the line without redrawing. The sheet is a little wider than the 2:3 oban, so it floats on a narrow margin at our standard sizes.
Printed to order on archival matte paper or canvas, framed in the country of delivery.
Before and after
Left: the archive scan exactly as published. Right: the file that goes to the printer.
Restoration notes
Restoration: trimmed the mount and scanner margins, balanced levels while keeping the paper tone and the flat colour blocks of the woodblock impression (85% of the original colour retained), removed dust and specks, applied gentle sharpening. Toning, wormholes, the printer's registration and the collector's seals are kept where they belong to the object; nothing is redrawn.
Every print carries its archive credit on the packing slip. Paper tone and small imperfections of the original are kept on purpose; nothing is redrawn.
Pairs well with
Hang them together — 10% off the second framed print
Informational purposes only, no warranties, not professional advice. All products are new archival prints made from restored scans of historical maps held by public archives; they are not original antiques. Colours vary by screen and by paper.
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