Gifts of the Ebb Tide (The Shell Book) (Shiohi no tsuto)
Gifts of the Ebb Tide is a Japanese illustrated book of shells printed in Edo in 1789 by the publisher Tsutaya Jūzaburō, with designs attributed to Kitagawa Utamaro. The pictures are colour prints of shells and seaweed set against pale paper, with dark rocks encrusted with barnacles and shells in the later plates. A designer might take the sparse, naturalistic layout, with shells scattered at the edges and empty space left open, as a model for botanical or natural-history composition.
