A Calendar for the Year of the Boar, 1791

A courtier and a boy play football under a tree, and the year’s long months hide in his robe.

Work: egoyomi (picture calendar)
Maker: Anonymous Japanese printmaker
Date: 1791
Era: The Victorian game · 1870–1900
Source: Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam · via Wikimedia Commons

The year was carried by a man at play.

Format

The full-resolution scan, colour-managed to the source — yours to print, study, and explore.

Size

$29.00

The story

An egoyomi, a Japanese picture calendar, made for the year of the boar, 1791. An anonymous printmaker shows a courtier and a boy playing football under a tree, and the Rijksmuseum’s cataloguer records the trick inside it: the numbers of the year’s long months are written into the pattern of the courtier’s robe. A calendar that has to be found inside a picture asks to be read slowly, and this one rewards it. The game is kemari, the court football in which the players keep one ball in the air together. A collector’s stamp on the back, Lugt 2228, records a later owner.

See it on your wall

The piece, in the room it was made for

A Calendar for the Year of the Boar, 1791, printed large and framed — in the den, the club bar, the supporters’ bar. Every edition ships ready to become the piece the room is built around.

A Calendar for the Year of the Boar, 1791 framed on the wall

About this reproduction

A reproduction of egoyomi (picture calendar) — Anonymous Japanese printmaker, 1791 — from the copy held by Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam · via Wikimedia Commons. The source. The work was published before 1931 and is public-domain verified.
Printed faithful to that source scan — restore honestly, disclose always. We do not re-colour it, complete it, or interpret it; the piece you receive is the image as it survives, halftone grain honored as history, not damage.
Printed to order on museum-grade cotton-rag stock with pigment inks — the pairing is rated 100+ years.
Colour-managed to the source; the tone of the paper and the ink is the period’s, not ours.
Ships in 5–10 business days, rolled in a heavy-wall tube (framed editions ship flat-packed).
If it arrives less than perfect, we reprint or refund — your choice.

Why our pieces cost more than a poster: a poster is a mass run on wood-pulp stock, colour-corrected to whatever flattered the press that day. This is one sheet, pulled for you, at a size where the maker’s hand is visible — the linework, the halftone grain, the lettering — on materials made to outlast their owner.

From the same collection