Album of Birds and Flowers (Kacho-ga)

During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Japan exported large quantities of all types of objects, at a range of prices, to the West. Fashionable consumers purchased and displayed these objects in their homes. An item such as this fine album would have been prized not only for its exotic beauty but also for its sensitivity to the natural world, evident in the closely observed pictures of birds, insects, and plants.