Black Collar

Itô Shinsui carefully distinguished the woman in the mirror from the figure in the foreground by slightly lightening the colors of the kimono in the reflection, and by drawing her face with sketchy lines that contrast with the unbroken contours delineating the real woman. He also applied powdered mica, a lustrous mineral, to evoke the mirror’s reflective surface. Shinsui’s contemporaries highly valued such depictions of idealized beauties in traditional settings.