19th century Japanese flip-over drawings

Pink Tentacle has a nice gallery of old Japanese drawings of heads that look like faces right-side-up or up-side-down.

Joge-e, or “two-way pictures,” are a type of woodblock print that can be viewed either rightside-up or upside-down. Large numbers of these playful prints were produced for mass consumption in the 19th century, and they commonly featured bizarre faces of deities, monsters or historical figures (including some from China). Only a few examples of original joge-e survive today.

Link

[#1 posted by buddy66 , March 31, 2008 4:54 PM]

"Only a few examples survive..."

Good.

[#2 posted by butfirst , March 31, 2008 5:31 PM]

The two heads in the bottom left corner remind me of Kashira, the three bouncing green heads in Miyazaki's Spirited Away. As a side note, I've always thought that they'd be an awesome idea for a set of three upholstered footstools/pouffes for someone with mad craft skillz. Anyone up for the challenge?

[#3 posted by Avram , March 31, 2008 5:38 PM]

Aw, Buddy, don't be like that!

[#4 posted by tikal2k , March 31, 2008 5:49 PM]

Oh cool, these are nice and twisted!

[#5 posted by scottfree , March 31, 2008 5:57 PM]

Man, I'm freaking out.

[#6 posted by cha0tic , March 31, 2008 9:17 PM]

There's some serious elbow tattoo fodder there.

[#7 posted by Teresa Nielsen Hayden / Moderator , April 1, 2008 9:09 AM]

Avram, I've sent Buddy a note about it.

[#8 posted by buddy66 , April 1, 2008 4:48 PM]

Note duly noted. I guess I drew too many of these things during an obsessive phase in 5th grade. Fortunately my hormones kicked in and I switched to sketching multitudes of scantily clad pneumatic young women.

The snarky one-worder was uncalled for, and I apologize.

[#9 posted by Takuan , April 1, 2008 4:54 PM]

scan them and send them in (any left?)