Dragon Sumi Painting by Mariusz Szmerdt

This is a dragon painted by Mariusz Szmerdt. I love this painting. His work is very beautiful and detailed. In mounting this I wanted to think about cloths that would be both symbolically significant and make the artwork standout. There is one phrase that I used from Chinese/Japanese folklore that is related to the dragon. Can you find the symbols in the cloths?

If you would like to have a custom painting mounted for you please contact to sales@customjapanesecalligraphy.com

Touryuumon Revisited

This scroll is for sale, and would be good for dojo's that want to incorporate a phrase for perserverance and persistance in the face of challenges. For inquiries on pricing contact to sales@customjapanesecalligraphy.com


Bonsai artists would have had a field day if this was the scroll that I originally wanted to display in the Toko no Ma display at the Toko Kazari competition at the Clark Center for Japanese Art and Culture.....but as it is that scroll was still not traditional enough.

Because most Westerners can not read Kanji to a high level of proficiency, one of my philosophies of scroll frame design is to convey a message through the cloth consistent with the meaning of the word or phrase.

In this case, I took the Dragon cloth pattern that is very clearly visible, and put it into the meaning of the transformation of the Koi into a Dragon. This scroll is in a simple Fukuro Hyougu style, because I wanted the viewer to focus solely on the lettering and visually see the transformation into the dragon. I used a larger jikubou and jikusaki for this scroll to provide a better view of the dragon.

Scroll Measurements as follows:
 Name in Kanji Name in English Size in Bun Size in Millimeters Size in Inches 


天 Ten 110 333.3 13.12

上中廻し Ue Ichimonji 0 0 0.00

紙本の幅さ Artwork Width 84 254.52 10.02

紙本の長さ Artwork Length 146 442.38 17.42

柱 Pillars 11 33.33 1.31

下中廻し Shita Ichimonji 0 0 0.00

地 Chi 76 230.28 9.07

掛け軸の幅さ Scroll Width 106 321.18 12.64

掛け軸の長さ Scroll Length 332 1005.96 39.60