CAD 
US Dollars
British Pound
Original Japanese corporate branding woodblock print, circa 1920s.
Gently pasted onto an archival mat to protect the print’s durability.
Measures 19.5” x 18.5” overall.
Good condition overall. Ex-ownership stamps to margins of most pages. Occasional internal offsetting, light marks, tears, and thumbing.
Sold unframed.
About this piece:
This is a remarkably early record of Japanese fashion design in the service of commercial branding, originally pulled from a rare catalogue of 50 custom woodblock-printed designs. These designs were for products such as Tenugui handcloths, furoshiki wrapping cloths, coats, and so on, all produced by Shirokiya Gofukuten clothing store, a major kimono shop based in Tokyo and one of the city’s first department stores. Most of the designs feature the name of a corporation or company, such as Sapporo Beer, Dunlop, and the Okura Shoten bookshop. Featured alongside those are designs for a hospital, an onsen, ryokan hotels, and electricity, insurance, makeup, and clothing companies.
During the Taisho Era, at which time the original catalogue of 50 prints was published, corporate branding and advertising was beginning to be seen as an important economic field. Corporate branding went through extensive development as an art form, a career path, and a necessity for marketing. Companies began to invest in their advertising and began to establish in-house advertising departments. The interrelationship between fashion and commercial branding in Japan during the 1920s has yet to be adequately explored.
OCLC locates no copies located outside of Japan.
