Edutainment > Japanese Print Dealers

Woodblock Print by Unknown

Ukiyo-e Dealers - Directory
Maiko
copyright protected

This page provides some information how to find dealers of Japanese prints, how they are organized and some comments on artelino's directory of worldwide ukiyo-e dealers.

Please read this page before you use our directory of Ukiyo-e dealers.

The images on this page are link-sensitive and take you to other articles or web sites in which you might be interested.

Dealers in Japanese Prints - Worldwide

Collecting Japanese prints is an established segment of the art market. The number of dealers worldwide is to our knowledge roughly between 150 and 250 - not included occasional amateur and semi-professional dealers.

Nearly all dealers are one-man/woman shows or family businesses. The number of larger enterprises with one ore more full-time or part-time employees is not more than a dozen.

Japanese print dealers are located mostly in Japan, in the United States of America plus Canada, Europe and Australia. South America, Africa and the Middle East are a "white" territory for collecting ukiyo-e. Major dealers in Europe are in the Netherlands with a strong collector community due to the country's history as an exclusive trade partner with Japan by the Dutch East India Company in Nagasaki for circa 250 years, but also in the United Kingdom.

Dealer Meetings

by Takeji Asano 1900-1999

Japanese Prints
Snow Man
copyright Takeji Asano

Most dealers in Japanese prints are loosely connected in an informal worldwide network that has existed for many decades and long before "social networks" came into fashion on the internet.

Many European, American and Japanese dealers come together once or twice per year for so-called dealer meetings. This is not a kind of Opec conference, but the dealers come together to buy and sell Japanese prints in auctions among themselves. The meetings are an important source of print exchange - with the Japanese dealers more on the supply side and the European and North American colleagues more on the puchasing side. In addition, important European and US dealers travel frequently to Japan for business reasons.

Associations

Only in Japan dealers are organized in an association of their own - the Ukiyo-e Dealers Association of Japan, established in 1981. The association has circa 50 Japanese members and about 25 associated members from outside of Japan - mainly the United States of America, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom.

Other important associations where major ukiyo-e dealers usually have a membership are the Society for Japanese Arts in the Netherlands and the Japanese Art Society of America. These are no dealer associations, but societies that are open for all friends of Japanese art with an emphasis on Japanese prints.

Ukiyo-e Directory by artelino

by Takeji Asano 1900-1999

Society for Japanese Arts - Overview
Red Temple Gate
copyright Takeji Asano

Our Directory of Ukiyo-e Dealers is a service provided by artelino for our clients and web site visitors.

Important: This directory is neither complete nor does an inclusion in this directory mean that this dealer is "approved" by artelino. Wherever possible the accompanying text was taken from the homepage of the dealer's web site. The work on the restructuring of the dealer directory has not yet been finished by the time this article was written (April 2009). Therefore some entries may still be without text and/or image.

Disclaimer: artelino is in no way responsible or can take any liability for the dealer entries of this directory.

We do not include dealers that we consider as dishonest or otherwise not trustworthy. And by and large we do not include direct competitors (online auctions).

We list only dealers who have a web site. There are still quite a few - mostly in Japan - who may not have one yet. And we are sure there are still a few with web sites that we do not know of - in Japan, Europe, the USA and Australia or that we may have overlooked. If you are a dealer in Japanese prints and want to be included please contact us.

Dieter Wanczura
(April 2009)

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