OGAWA, Kazumasa.

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Some Japanese Flowers. First edition The vibrant collotypes of lilies, irises, peonies, wisteria, and camellia were later used as frontispieces in Brinkley's Japan Described and Illustrated (1897-98).Ogawa Kazumasa spearheaded the development of photography and photochemical printing in Japan. "While Commodore M. C. Perry opened Japan to the world in 1854, it was the distinguished and influential artist Ogawa, many years later, who put the country on display for all the world to see and appreciate" (Smith, p. 71). He produced many different versions of this work with a variety of plates. Examples have been identified with between 5 and 38 collotypes, but no precedence has been established.This copy is inscribed to the British railway engineer Harry Footner by the Japanese engineer F. Nozawa on 11 September 1901, during his world-wide tour of railway networks. Harry Footner (c.1840-1931) was chief engineer for the permanent way of the London and North-Western Railway, improving the quality of the line and pioneering inventions such as gravitational shunting. Nozawa is noted as accompanying the director general of the Imperial Government Railroads of Japan, Matsumoto Soichiro, on a world-tour of railroads. They visited the United States in January 1901.

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