Circulation and collecting of Japanese design books in the north of Italy - The Varese city library case study

At the beginning of the 20th century, the term zuan denoted prototype designs to be applied to an artefact in the applied arts. These prototypes were not only popular because they provided ideas and patterns to be reproduced as decorations; they were also considered works of art, especially in the form of zuanchō - design books. In this form, then, they were involved in the export trade that reached Europe during the course of the century, brought by traders, entrepreneurs and enthusiasts. In this contribution, the aim is to describe a particular collection of books of this genre, which arrived in Italy, in the city of Varese, at the beginning of the 20th century, and that was donated to the city's civic library by a prominent personality of the time. The zuanchō collection found in Varese is significant because the volumes were produced by many different artists and printed in Kyoto by a Japanese publishing house called Unsōdō, still active today. This contribution will investigate the style of the volumes by some of these artists, including Kamisaka Sekka, Furuya Kōrin. These artists began to depict naturalistic themes and subjects derived from the pictorial tradition with a focus on natural species resulting from the observation of real life increasingly characterised by simplified and graphic lines and shapes. They specialised in paper patterns and models not only for textiles, kimonos, fans and tsuba, but also for vases and supports, inspired by new contemporary art forms from Europe, such as art nouveau, art deco and Secession.