At the turn of the twentieth century, Americans began enthusiastically collecting Japanese woodblock prints. Mary A. Ainsworth (1867-1950), a member of the Oberlin College class of 1889, was one of the earliest collectors and a notable exception among the majority of wealthy male connoisseurs. During a period of twenty-five years, between 1906 and the early 1930s, Ainsworth assembled an outstanding and historically representative collection of Japanese woodblock prints from Japan’s Tokugawa period (1600-1868).
Following her death, Ainsworth’s comprehensive holdings of more than fifteen hundred Japanese prints of exceptional quality and over one hundred important woodblock books (amounting to three hundred volumes), along with a major reference library and several printing blocks, were bequeathed to Oberlin College.
Find out more in the exhibition “A Museum for Oberlin,” which closes on December 23.
Image:
Utagawa Hiroshige (Japanese, 1797–1858)
The Grove of Plum Trees at Kameido,
no. 30 from the series One Hundred Views of Famous Places in Edo, 1857
Color woodblock print
Mary A. Ainsworth Bequest, AMAM 1950.1396
