Shinbi taikan
Shinbi taikan is a late nineteenth-century Japanese survey of Buddhist art, compiled by Shiichi Tajima and published in Kyoto in 1899 for scholars and collectors. Its reproductions are photographic plates of ink landscape paintings in pale grey tones, mostly tall hanging scrolls set on cream paper, with mist-filled valleys, boats on water, and pavilions among trees; a designer might borrow their sparse composition, generous empty space, and soft tonal gradations.
