Ōmori, from the series Famous Places in the Eastern Capital (early 1830s): Art, History and Details

Ōmori, from the series Famous Places in the Eastern Capital (early 1830s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Utagawa Kuniyoshi (Japanese, 1797–1861).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Sites around Edo (present-day Tokyo) were popular subjects of ukiyo-e (pictures of the floating world) prints in the early 1800s. The calligraphy in the red circle on the upper right is the title of the series, The Famous Places in the Eastern Capital. The Ōmori district, on Edo Bay a few miles south of Edo, was known for its cultivation of nori, the crackly sheets of seaweed commonly wrapped around rice balls or sushi rolls. Utagawa Kuniyoshi depicted two women gathering seaweed from cultivation beds. One uses chopsticks, while the other gently rakes the seaweed into the baskets in their boat. The tip of another skiff behind the stand of plants on the right and the cultivation beds in the distance suggest the scale and importance of this industry.

Object facts

• Title: Ōmori, from the series Famous Places in the Eastern Capital
• Date: early 1830s
• Creator attribution: Utagawa Kuniyoshi (Japanese, 1797–1861)
• Culture: Japan, Edo period (1615–1868)
• Type: Print
• Technique: Color woodblock print
• Dimensions: Overall: 23.9 x 34.2 cm (9 7/16 x 13 7/16 in.)
• Collection: Japanese Art
• Department: Japanese Art
• Accession number: 1985.335

Collection credit

The Kelvin Smith Collection, given by Mrs. Kelvin Smith

Further reading listed by the museum

• “Checklist of the Kelvin Smith Bequest.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 75, no. 7 (September 1988): 292–295.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.