M. P. Verneuil (1869–1942)

A book of reproductions of a French book of Japanese textile from 1910. The plates are fine, but the captions are next to useless. Frequently motifs are misidentified: a heron as a crane, a squirrel as a fox, etc. and even more commonly the caption will simply read "bird" for easily identified motifs such as oshidori (mandarin duck), suzume (sparrow), uguisu (bush warbler), etc. Even obvious man-made objects such as kabuto are merely labeled "ornamental motifs." For this reason I cannot recommend this book to anyone- it would confuse a novice and annoy anyone familiar with motifs already. Simply because the plates are reproduced from 1910 doesn't mean the same level of ignorance about Japanese textiles should be reproduced as well.… (more)