Image from, The Illustrations of a Thousand Shells by Yoichirō Hirase, Volume I Plate III © Peabody Essex Museum (PEM) 

Image from, The Illustrations of a Thousand Shells by Yoichirō Hirase, Volume I Plate XV © Peabody Essex Museum (PEM) 

Image from, The Illustrations of a Thousand Shells by Yoichirō Hirase, Volume I Plate XVIII © Peabody Essex Museum (PEM)

Image from, The Illustrations of a Thousand Shells by Yoichirō Hirase, Volume II Plate XL © Peabody Essex Museum (PEM)

Image from, The Illustrations of a Thousand Shells by Yoichirō Hirase, Volume III Plate XLII © Peabody Essex Museum (PEM)

Image from, The Illustrations of a Thousand Shells by Yoichirō Hirase, Volume III Plate LIV. © Peabody Essex Museum (PEM). 

Image from, The Illustrations of a Thousand Shells by Yoichirō Hirase, Volume III Plate LVI. © Peabody Essex Museum (PEM).

Image from, The Illustrations of a Thousand Shells by Yoichirō Hirase, Volume III Plate LVI. © Peabody Essex Museum (PEM).

The sea shell wood cut art illustrations are from a four volume set “The Illustrations of a Thousand Shells” by Yoichirō Hirase. The Phillips Library has three of the four volumes. It was published in 1914-1915. Some believe he originally planned to publish 10 volumes.

Mr. Hirase was born in Japan in 1859 and died in 1925. He was a Japanese malacologist. His son Shintarō Hirase was also a malacologist.

Yoichirō Hirase explains in the preface; “I have been no stranger to the elaborate elegance of lithography in colors, nor do I dislike the brilliant clearness of three-color-printing; and yet this work being not wholly for the benefit of scientific studies, but rather for the purpose of reference for artists and technologists, and besides being intended to be distributed not only among our country-people, but also to the friends abroad who have the same interest in conchology as we do, I consulted about the printing with the master of the book-store “Unsodo”, Kyoto, and expert in printing, who gave warm sympathy and approval to my plan of printing with wood-cuts.”