Some time ago one Connie Elrod offered me a set of the Maki zodiac in a format never seen before or since. These are not pulled from cement blocks. Rather they seem to be printed lithographs. One James Imai, a friend of Maki who lives in California, commissioned Maki to do a special zodiac set for the Lunar Year. Imai seems to have sent a card every year to friends. Imai sent them to his friend James Elrod seemingly one every year for 12 years...

5.75 x 8.5 in. ai in Japanese The white background is punctuated by a yellow sun and a red splash --true Maki style. Frame 5 shows Sanae’s careful translation and explanation of this print – and her intuition as to what Maki-san may have meant when he created this image 41 years ago. Copyright 2012 Sanae Nakajima Chambers and Daniel Tretiak

Haku Maki did a wide range of works: prints of many sizes, book plates, greeting cards, and postcards. Here are four postcards that he did in 1999. They are lithographs, each signed and with a Maki seal. They also appeared as prints at the same time. Haku Maki or his family produced them in the last year or so of his life.

A diptych of Maki prints, one done in 1968 and the other in 1969. In the best of Maki's spartan austere style, they are Poem 68-40 and Poem 69-13.

In 1970 the famous collector of Japanese art Felix Juda commissioned Haku Maki to produce at least 3 different sets of cards for greeting and thanks. Here we show three. The 4th image may have been one such card or a small print. I have owned it for many years and am still studying it. The ones done for Juda varied in attractiveness. The green one is vintage Maki: good design, good color, and good composition. It is only 5”x 5” but packs a wallop...

One of Maki’s favorite themes was the image shown here. Some outstanding ones are shown in the listing. I reckon Maki did about 25 different prints with the theme Child. Several little children can be seen swimming in the image in frame 9. The child in the right of this list panel is the image imprinted in the cover of Festive Wine, to which Maki contributed 21 images in 1969.

This research note was edited by Lois Dougan Tretiak whose assistance is gratefully noted.

Another of Maki's all-white prints, this one is of a Chinese coin. wu wei zhi zu Frame 5 shows the Han dynasty coin which inspired this 1981 print.

In 1976 Haku Maki did three pairs of prints in which the black and white were reversed. One set is shown here. The cement blocks were used to print the white on black, then cleaned to do black on white. These were done in such themes as Mind Wind and Cloud. These are strong sweeping images in rather large prints. The two Wind images here are typical of the type. They are all about 15" x 20" and in editions of 150.

Note 10 part II continues to discuss the evolution of Maki's prints.

This is one of three research notes that were numbered 23. This one is about Work 73-2, a Maki homage to a 19th-century Chinese writer. Dan Tretiak wrote: Enigma. The original eBay seller wrote this in his listing. He really got it right. Maki’s print has the four-character phrase as done by Deng in his writing in the 19th century We confirm Deng and Maki were in sync. The arrangement of Maki’s gold seal is more used in Chinese than Japanese. In any case ENJOY

Haku Maki was a major creative Japanese print maker of the second half of the 20th century. His major output from 1965 to 1990 consisted to several different themes of prints Kanji was the main theme for the first 15 years of that period. Then. Ceramics was second. But he also did a large number of prints with persimmon on theme. Most of the persimmon prints showed just one fruit. A few showed two Only two showed 3. These are shown here Both prints are serene no jarring colors or edges...

Work 73-12A is a firm and strong dragon not fierce not wimpy. The central kanji is offset by a small yellow Maki sun at the top left and a red splash on the right. They counterbalance each other and give color and verve to the whole print.

Work 73-56 L (fish). This is the second of Maki’s three huge prints that I have owned. This is Work 73-56 L (fish). Several aspects of this image are intriguing. My archive of Maki prints reveals that Maki produced over 100 different images in 1973. I have been able to account for many of them: 1 to 50 and 99 to 110. I had never known what went in the middle. Now I know at least one was work 73-56, the third huge print that Maki did. It is 3 x 6 feet...

In The Life and Works of Haku Maki I refer fairly briefly to his Big Reds and other large prints of the late 1960s and early 1970s. In this Research Note I present a more thorough compendium of this type of image and commentary. If any readers know of an image which should be in this Note, please let me know. For now please enjoy these. Poem 70-63 (Me) was acquired in 2010. Poem 71-90 ed of 108 Dance 69-2 NOTE: This is the first part of a two-part note. The second part is Note 7 B.

Please read the research note in frame 12 of the photos. There apparently was some misnumbering--there is no Note 13.

Daniel Tretiak, after publishing his book The Life and Works of Haku Maki in 2007, found that he had more to say about prints as they came into his life. And so he wrote Research Notes and published them on this site.

This Guest Research Note 1 is much ado about Nothing. The Maki print in question is 73-50A (Nothing). The essay is by David Bieling.