The "Tokonoma" Concept: Art For The Seasons

When I was a teen, my family lived in a beautiful old Japanese house, the location of the first Tolman Collection gallery. One of the wonderful things about having artists embedded so deeply in one’s personal life is that sometimes art replaces family photographs - renowned artist Clifton Karhu (1927 - 2007) was so taken with the house that he recreated it in the print below.

Clifton KARHU, House In Takaido, woodblock, 1976, ed. 25. 31.2" x 33"

With my family, in front of the Takaido House, c. 1976

The house had all the trappings that one would expect from a traditional Japanese house: a large wooden access gate that opened dramatically to the path to the house, an entrance with a steep genkan step where one left one’s shoes and changed into slippers, a beautiful garden punctuated with sculptural pines, and a traditional tea ceremony room off the living room, built of various types of burnished wood and smelling deliciously of fresh tatami mats. This room had a tokonoma, which is a small recessed alcove built into a wall, often with a shelf below on which to display ceramics. My parents explained its use to me: to display art seasonally and to present a particular piece of someone’s collection to its best advantage.

After that, I started to pay more attention to that area when we visited people’s homes (or traditional Japanese restaurants and inns), noticing that the tokonoma’s theme was most often a single hanging piece and an ikebana (floral arrangement) that changed with the seasons. In summer, a friend’s tokonoma might host a pale ink watercolor of morning glories and a glass vase of freshly cut green leaves. By autumn the theme would shift: perhaps a woodblock print of russet leaves paired with a small ceramic dish holding a single perfect persimmon. Winter might offer the opportunity to showcase a scroll scrawled with the calligraphic representation for snow and a milky white vase of stark, sculptural bare branches. In spring cherry blossoms were de rigueur, in both the highlighted art and natural element. That space taught me that art is not merely decoration or emotion, but a way to mark time, to acknowledge the fleeting beauty of each moment, and to give oneself the space to enjoy individual pieces from one’s art collection properly.

Now, far from that Japanese home, feeling the first real chill of New York’s cold season, I find myself drawn back to that idea, which is also a lovely one when considering the limitations of a typical city apartment wall space! But, even if you are lucky enough to have all the space you need to exhibit each and every one of your favorite pieces, imagine setting aside one particular wall to create your own tokonoma in order to showcase pieces that you only put on view once a year. The art would become a focal point for the season, keep the piece fresh, re-engage your emotions with it each time you hung it up. Imagine how much more you would notice and appreciate that particular piece if you were displaying it seasonally, with intention.

Many of The Tolman Collection of New York artists carry a seasonal awareness in their work which breathe with the cadence of light, texture, and time, and late fall gives us one of the richest palettes in printmaking. Consider the surface of handmade washi paper, its faintly irregular fibers catch pigment and shifting light in ways that feel tactile and alive. Woodblocks by Yoshikatsu TAMEKANE, for example, present translucent layers of autumn sky blue, gold-bronze and other fall colors, evoking the fallen leaves and the texture of the bare trees of fall.

Yoshikatsu TAMEKANE, Somewhere I’ve Been Before, woodblock, 2025, ed. 20, 19" x 26"

Then there is Tōkō SHINODA (1913 - 2021), whose lithographs combine deep, velvety blacks and brushed silver-tones, the kind of restrained gesture that echoes the hush of early evening, the transition from light to shadow in late November. Her sweep of ink can feel like the wind quietly passing through autumn branches, her calligraphy the falling leaves themselves, a rhythm of movement and stillness.

Toko SHINODA, Ancient Dream, lithograph, 2007, ed. 50, 15" x 11

In the works of Yuichi HASEGAWA (1945 - 2025), one might detect the subtle geometry of autumn’s architecture, be it pale moonlight behind a seasonal leaf (or persimmon?) full branch, or the gentle diminishing of daylight. His woodblock prints, often cool in tone, capture a season’s change: dusk settling, temperatures dropping, the air becoming clearer and sharper.

Taruho’s Autumn, woodblock, 2021, ed.15, 19”x 14” ​

In Yoshio IMAMURA’s etchings and chine-collé, the artist invites us into quiet seasonal moments imbued with his signature precision and subtle imagery of nature. The muted colors and soft layering of ink evoke the hush of the autumn season as nature puts itself to bed until the spring. 

Yoshio IMAMURA, Poem of Life, 2020, etching/woodblock, ed. 48, 15" x 19"

As the cold weather of late autumn settles in and you hunker down in the comfort and warmth of your home, perhaps you’ll find a small corner (in your living room above the fireplace, or a wall near the entrance, perhaps?) where one particular piece would become the marker of the season. At this moment of the year, this could be something with the warmth of rust, the sheen of gold, or the crisp clarity of silvery dusk on paper.

The tokonoma isn’t about excess. It’s about paying attention to light, weather, color, time, and a specific piece from the works that you have collected. Art, like the seasons, asks only that we pause long enough to properly observe it. If you espouse this way of displaying your collection, the work that you choose seasonally and intentionally won’t simply decorate your room, these pieces will come to mark a moment of stillness and contemplation in your daily life.

Yoshikatsu TAMEKANE, Somewhere I've Been Before - Request price

Toko SHINODA, Ancient Dream - Request price

Yuichi HASEGAWA, Taruho's Autumn - Request price

Yoshio IMAMURA, Poem of Life - Request price