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Lookit the pretties

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Itō Jakuchū (1716–1800) was a Japanese painter and Zen Buddhist lay brother who painted many subjects in nature, but famously birds. Mostly famously CHIKKENS! Particularly roosters.

He’s well worth checking out — his paintings are more naturalistic and less stylized than many of his contemporaries, but nevertheless beautifully detailed and formalized. I’ve spent a happy hour banging around Google Images search.

This year is the 300th anniversary of his birth, so there’s lots of his stuff to look at online, though sadly much of the accompanying text is Japanese.

But this? This is not an Itō Jakuchū cockerel. This is a cookie in the exact shape of an Itō Jakuchū cockerel. And a pretty good copy it is, too.
 

 

Thanks to Bob Mulroy for sending me this fun link.


Comments


Comment from Deborah HH
Time: June 7, 2016, 8:05 pm

Very pretty. The paintings are so beautiful. And the cookies! The chickens, the tiny warrior and sword! And then you skipped over the feathered chicken foot stiletto heels. Honestly.


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: June 7, 2016, 8:07 pm

Those heels kinda creeped me out, honestly.


Comment from Uncle Al
Time: June 7, 2016, 8:14 pm

Oooh! Cookie!
I’d like a piece of tail, please.
:
:
:
Now, how can I pass up a straight line like that, I ask you!


Comment from p2
Time: June 7, 2016, 8:26 pm

chikken. cookies…….chookies????


Comment from OldFert
Time: June 7, 2016, 8:38 pm

I see you snuck some Stoaty goodness in the CHIKKENS link you gave. Wanna rassle, dead pool, darkest England, y mucho mas. What a coop! Er, I mean coup!


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: June 7, 2016, 9:16 pm

Oh, that’s really weird, OldFert! I didn’t, you know, and those links weren’t there when I posted.

That’s a google images search of “itō jakuchū cockerels” — but I’m being spidered constantly, so because the words “itō jakuchū” and “cockerels” are on my front page, it has since picked up images off my front page sidebar to include in the search results.

Wow. I’m impressed.

And this, ladies and gentlemongs, is why you sometimes get weird and inexplicable images in your searches.


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: June 7, 2016, 9:20 pm

By the way — in my capacity as Doktor of Chikkenology — they’re using “cockerel” wrong.

Up to six weeks old = chick.
Six weeks to a year = cockerel (male) or pullet (female).
Year+ = Cock or rooster (male) or hen (female).


Comment from Rich Rostrom
Time: June 7, 2016, 11:19 pm

Does a capon still count as a cock?

Because steers aren’t bulls and geldings aren’t stallions, I think.


Comment from Scott Jacobs
Time: June 8, 2016, 1:39 am

So the guy was well known for painting cocks, eh?


Comment from Feynmangroupie
Time: June 8, 2016, 2:36 pm

Those cookies are too beautiful to eat and too well sculpted. I think I would shellac them and hang them on the wall or in a shadow box. The paintings are gloreeeus!!! I Iove eastern styles of painting but I always wonder why their depictions of people are so stylized, even in The 1700s, when western art had progressed to much more accurate depictions. I wonder what they thought of Western art, assuming they had been exposed to it by then.


Comment from tomfrompv
Time: June 8, 2016, 9:08 pm

Has this blog turned into a chicken-all-the-time fest? Sorry, but it seems the brexit is so much more interesting….at least for maybe one post in every 10 to be about something other than chicken-related.

I would welcome a screed from Oceania at this point, assuming he/she is still around. Or maybe something about witch marks on the inside part of that beam in your closet? How about an update of snails in the toaster? Sheeps having babies? I’m jonesing for something Brit-like but not chikken!


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: June 8, 2016, 10:41 pm

No, tom, sometimes it’s about banjos.

Seriously, whaddya want — politics?!

Where is pv, anyhow?


Pingback from Itō Jakuchū Week at TechnoChitlins – TechnoChitlins
Time: June 12, 2016, 5:01 pm

[…] was led to this fellow by none other than Ms. Weasal, who was impressed with his watercolors of chickens. As you’ll see, though, he did much more […]

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