The Servants of the Dragon King of the Sea: Fish and Shells (Tatsu no miyatsuko gyokai fu)
A Japanese woodblock-printed album of 1802 by Kitao Masayoshi (1764-1824), a picture book of sea creatures for a literate audience. Its pages show fish, prawns, and shellfish drawn in fine ink line with light grey wash and handwritten Japanese captions in columns beside them. A designer might take its spare, economical contour drawing and the way text and image share a page, with plenty of open paper around each specimen.
