絵本鷹かゞみ １、２、３
This is a Japanese ehon picture book, Ehon Takagami volumes 1 to 3, by the painter Kawanabe Kyosai under the name Tōiku, published in Tokyo in 1879 by Kinkadō for a general reading public. Its woodblock-printed pages show hawks hunting, falconers on horseback, and figures in grassland and pine landscapes, drawn in fluid black ink outline with little shading. A designer could take from them the economy of a single confident contour line, with figures and birds suggested by gesture and negative space rather than detail.
