A multi-analytical approach to identify red colorants on woodblock prints attributed to Suzuki Harunobu

Abstract

Red organic dye identification is an important topic for conservation of Japanese ukiyo-e prints. Of particular interest are the works of Suzuki Harunobu, who was working at the inception of full-color printmaking. These prints were made on thin kōzo paper and woodblock printed with semi-transparent to opaque regions of dye(s) and/or pigment(s) mixed with binder. This study used imaging analysis, X-ray fluorescence (XRF), Raman, and surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopies (SERS) to identify the red dyes and pigments on Harunobu prints in the collection of the Portland Art Museum. Through image analysis (visible, UV, and IR illuminations), 23 prints were categorized by appearance. XRF results provided identification of vermilion and ochre pigments, and identified color fields that contained lead. Raman analysis allowed the identification of red lead, and SERS was used to identify both safflower and madder dyes. This work is expected to contribute to the body of knowledge regarding the red dye and pigment palette and mixtures in use in the mid- to late eighteenth century, in the critical early years of full-color printmaking. Graphical Abstract

From Materials to Technique: A Complete Non-Invasive Investigation of a Group of Six Ukiyo-E Japanese Woodblock Prints of the Oriental Art Museum E. Chiossone (Genoa, Italy)

“…Since the risk of damaging the appearance of this type of objects can be very high, they are considered too fragile to allow sampling and noninvasive techniques are preferred for their investigation. As far as we know, only a few studies involving destructive techniques have been reported, namely liquid chromatography with mass spectrometry (HPLC-MS) and surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) [4,8]. As a consequence, imaging and spectroscopic techniques are the most adopted.…”

“…The most common coupling is with fiber-optic reflectance spectroscopy (FORS) and/or X-ray fluorescence (XRF) [3,4,[9][10][11][12][13], although also the combined use of spectrofluorimetry has been reported [14,15]. Moreover, again referring to single-point spectroscopic methods, the application of Fourier-transform infrared (FTIR) [3,15,16] and Raman spectroscopy [4,8,17] was also documented for the study of woodblock prints. It is worth noting that these latter techniques have the great advantage of providing more specific information on the analytes as they are vibrational spectroscopies.…”