Three young women examine sheets of decorated paper within an interior overlooking a garden with a meandering stream. Bamboo blinds are on the left and a wood panel decorated with an immortal with a goat faces onto the veranda - alluding to the year 1799.

Dr. Gerhard Pulverer is a German medical researcher who worked at the University of Cologne. He bought his first Japanese woodblock prints in Kyoto in the 1970s while visiting Japan for a scientific conference. For more than thirty years, he and his wife Rosemarie travelled the world assembling a large collection woodblock prints and Japanese illustrated books (ehon). In forming the collection, he drew on the advice of highly regarded experts including Jack Hillier, C.H. Mitchell, Tim Clark and Ellis Tinios.

In 2007 the Freer Gallery of Art in Washington, DC purchased the illustrated book collection. It is today regarded as one of the most outstanding and comprehensive collections of Japanese illustrated books outside Japan.

For an insightful interview with the collector by Ellis Tinios (on behalf of the Smithsonian National Museum of Art), go to: https://pulverer.si.edu/node/186