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Here's a closer look at what we've done so far (this is only about one third of the impressions in the final print):

We've got a mix of test paper and a few sheets of real washi, and as you can see, at this point there is no attempt whatsoever to make them 'all look alike'. We're experimenting with the depth of the tones, the width of the gradations, and the general colour selection.

The biggest thing she is taking home from this project at this stage is the way that 'light' in the finished print is created not by printing it directly, but by surrounding an area with darker tones. The yellow undertone on the sea in this print will provide the light, but it doesn't make much sense until everything else is in place. This is one of the great difficulties in doing a shin-hanga type of print - it doesn't look 'right' until you're finished, but along the way, you have no real idea how it is going to work ...

That's what testing is for, of course!

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Looking at that photo it seems like half the population of Tokyo is exhibiting here! I think that's almost true, and the other half came to look!

When the waves parted now and then, you could see the actual booths ...

Our purpose in attending the show this time wasn't really to sell stuff (although we did indeed send a number of prints on their way to new homes ...). One of our little signs reads 'Looking for staff ...' and we were hoping that among the thousands of 'starving young artists' we could meet a few people who might be candidates for working with us on our venture.

We didn't get a whole lot of response to that, but did make a couple of contacts, and we'll probably be having some of them come out and talk to us later this week. It's not like we can actually offer 'employment' to anybody right now, but we certainly won't be able to move forward unless we can find a few more competent people ...

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... but it turned out that this wasn't really necessary. Once he moved around to the other side and took a few whacks with a little sledgehammer we have, it took only seconds before he broke through:

And the thing then basically fell apart as he whacked at it. We were a bit taken aback to find that there was some rebar in there ...

... but it was only very lightly tied to the main concrete, and was easily removed without any cutting.

Neighbour Yamaguchi-san was (understandably) curious about the noise, and dropped over just in time to see Lee-san get to the bottom of it.

After a couple of hours of cleanup - we smashed up and buried the chips around the foundation of the building - it was all done.

I spent the rest of the day involved in interesting conversations with collector Serge A, who was visiting from France, and after pouring him onto his return train (that's an exaggeration - we only had two beers each!), returned to begin the preparations for this weekend's Design Festa event.

Tsushima-san and I will be manning a booth at this humungous show, and hopefully we'll have a chance to meet some people with an interest in our work - either in buying it, or helping us make it!

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They date from just about ten years ago ...

... when I carved them to create one of the prints in my second Surimono Album:

And if you couldn't tell what the image is from those photos, this one should give it away:

Yes, it's the image of a traditional sailing boat that was created by Hiroshi Yoshida for inclusion in his introductory book of woodblock printmaking techniques.

This is going to be an excellent 'exercise' for Tsushima-san. Up to this point, the work she has done has been mainly in the ukiyo-e tradition - with a keyblock outlining areas that are then filled in with colour. This image doesn't work like that, and the effects are created by washes and gradations of overlaid colours.

I think she's capable of it, and of course she'll have pretty good guidance along the way. I hope you will enjoy following along as she builds it over the coming couple of weeks!

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Expanding into the next door space ...

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I said at the end of the previous post about the workroom expansion that I would post photos when I 'breakthrough' ... Well, 'breakthrough' hasn't happened yet, but we have some photos anyway.

Here's a photo showing the area in question. That is the outer wall of my workroom on the left, and we are looking at my neighbour's second basement level:

And if I go over there onto his 'balcony' and look back in this direction, we see this:

And going inside ...

What you are seeing here is about half of the room (the concrete beam on the ceiling is the half-way point). The space is about 4 x 8 meters (something approaching 400 square feet).

The breeze-block patch you see on the wall there is of course the other side of what we saw in the earlier photo of my workroom. We've now cleared away the insulation and framing on our side, ready for opening it up:

So, after teasing everybody with the photos earlier, I can now explain. There are three houses in a row, all perched on top of a single large concrete platform. When it was being built, there was no plan to use the lower levels at all; the platform was simply a way to create level 'ground' for building the houses. Gaps were left in the concrete walls down there to allow the workers passage back and forth as they built the place.

But somewhere during construction, somebody had the idea to make the lower levels accessible to the residents of the houses, so they enclosed the outer walls, blocked up the gaps between the units, and added a rat's nest of metal staircases for access. The 'rooms' themselves were left as bare concrete shells.

Although I myself found the presence of those two basement levels to this structure a huge 'selling point' when it came time to buy this building, my neighbours have never seen things the same way. The people in house #3 are using the first basement as a suite for Grandma, and the lowest one for storage (at least until recently, when their son began to use it for a personal room). The people in house #2 (my direct neighbours) had their B1 level outfitted as a playroom for their (then small) children, but in recent years are not using it at all. As for their B2 level, the owner has yet to set foot in the space, more than 18 years after he purchased the house.

Although that sounds simply incredible to me, it sort of makes sense from his point of view. These are north-facing rooms, at the lower level of a steep valley, right on the edge of a (damp) river, and are ... cold, cold, and cold. A typical Japanese father has no experience at all with home renovation, and will not even own such a thing as a hand drill. The only way available to him to turn this space into something liveable would involve calling a local builder, and of course spending a considerable amount of money. For what? They have a normal amount of room upstairs, and anyway, both parents work six days a week, and both children are out from morning 'till late at night with school activities. Their house is actually used only for sleeping.

So long story short, I have looked at that space for a number of years now, idly thinking 'what if ...' And now, with the expansion of our activities via the Mokuhankan venture, it has become time to make a move. I approached him the other week with a proposal to rent it, and he shrugged and gave a 'why not' kind of answer. I typed up a simple proposal outlining each of our responsibilities (rental fee, termination procedure, noise rules, maintenance, improvements, etc. etc.) and the two of us signed it. He gave me the key this morning, and I headed in there to clean up.

I removed an Egyptian layer of dust from the floor with brooms and a shovel, then hauled in my new compressor and blew all the rest away. I couldn't begin to smack the blocks out, because today is Sunday and everybody in the structure is at home, and any blows to the concrete resonate through the whole place. I'll get at that job sometime during the next week when everybody is out at work and school.

But I mean, can you actually believe this? What are the odds that - living in Tokyo as I do - there would be an unused space next door? And that the owner would let me use it? And that he wouldn't want an arm and a leg? And ... that there would be a doorway already cut in the concrete, so that we can simply step through into the wide open new area?

No way! Never 'gonna happen!

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Introducing our newest trainee ...

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This post is long overdue! People have been asking about the 'new face' they have now and then seen on the webcam ...

Meet our most recent 'Trainee' ... Ms. Teiko Patricia Fujii:

Fujii-san came to us by a very roundabout route - American printmaker Lynita Shimizu had heard that we were looking for trainees here, and she contacted an old family friend (from her own days in Japan, some years back), who had a daughter recently graduated from a major Art University here.

One thing led to another, and here she is, busy at work on some of our standard 'training' items:

Unlike the other ladies who are here training, Fujii-san isn't actually here primarily to 'work'. She is attending some kind of vocational course on digital/web design/etc., and I guess may be looking for work in that sector later, I'm not really sure.

But while doing that, she wants to learn what she can about this printing thing, and her commitment has been evident right from the start. She lives a very long way from here, so far that when people hear where she lives, they say, "Eh? And she comes all the way here, just to practice for a few hours, and then go home???" But she doesn't seem to mind. (Or maybe she simply sleeps on the train all the way, who knows!)

Knowing that she isn't perhaps going to be able to become a very productive member of the staff soon - because of her school commitments - she has gone out of her way not to 'bother' me while she is here. Today for example, I worked upstairs in the woodshop, only coming down to the print room once every couple of hours to check up on how she was doing. She simply worked away steadily on her own, figuring things out as well as she could by herself.

What did she make today?

Here they are, spread out to dry:

And let's have a closer look (click for an enlargement):

What do you think? Has she 'got it', or not?

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How to solve our growing space problem?

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... one large step for Mokuhankan!

What with all the new projects going on here recently, we're running into a real space problem. The four levels of this building are all now pretty much crammed with stuff, and not 'stuff' as in 'junk', 'stuff' as in tools, materials, prints, and blocks!

And now with the very large project for building the wooden cases for Dave's subscription prints building up to a climax, the situation is critical. The other day, when we had to do the first testing of the setup for varnishing those cases, we had to do it outdoors ... in the rain!

What to do?

Well, have a look at these photos ... Here's a photo taken this morning, showing one corner of the downstairs workroom:

Here's the same area seen during an earlier stage of construction:

And here's one taken more than ten years ago, soon after the construction first began:

So?

Well, if I show you this photo, taken from across the river looking back at the overall structure (before my workroom was built actually, but you get the idea of what the building looks like ...)

... you might be able to put 2 and 2 together ... I'll post more photos after I break through!

'Shrink' back down ... | Discussion [9]

A new 'item was added to the Mokuhankan catalogue today, and here is the text from the explanation page:

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Well, once in ten years, anyway!

A new 'item' was added to the Mokuhankan catalogue today, and here is the text from the explanation page:

"The prints on this page are all ones that were originally issued as part of the 'Hanga Treasure Chest' published by Dave in 2005. At that time, the series was available by subscription only - in a full set of 24 prints. 200 sets were produced, and it was very well subscribed at the time, has sold steadily as a 'back number' subscription since then, and is now nearly sold out (just a few sets are left at time of writing). The blocks are still in very good condition, and as time permits they will be re-printed to produce prints for this Mokuhankan catalogue. (Three of them have already been issued that way - the Hokusai Carp, the Autumn Bonsai, and the Spring Fuji).

But now that Dave's series is 'history', it is time to clean out his drawers. In order to make 200 copies of any given image, more than 200 sheets go into the printing stack of course. There will always be some spoilage during a print run, and as it is impossible to gauge how many sheets will come out properly, around 10% extra are put in the stack. The spoiled ones are tossed out upon inspection, but there are always some perfectly acceptable prints 'left over' - over and above the 200 needed for the 'edition'.

So here they are. This is your chance to get some of these little prints without having to subscribe to the entire set. The prints are all exactly the same as those sent out to the original subscribers, with Dave's signature, his 'baren' studio seal, mounted on mat boards, and wrapped in a folder containing information on the particular design."

Here's the page!

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But I ran into a small glitch in that work yesterday - my heavy-duty table saw developed a strange noise, and then a strange wobble in the blade.

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Most recent blog updates coming out of our workshop have been over on the Woodblock Roundtable side of things - I'm part way through a marathon batch of 50 cases for the 'Arts of Japan' print set, and that is of course eating all the time.

But I ran into a small glitch in that work yesterday; I was dressing a stack of case 'tops' to size when my table saw developed a strange noise, and then a strange wobble in the blade. I made a cursory inspection by taking the access plate off and checking the blade mounting, but could see nothing out of the ordinary:

But even running it without a blade produced the same noise, so there was nothing for it but to remove the top and have a look at the guts. It's a pretty simple construction, nothing much to go wrong. The wooden bar running from the motor to the front panel is the clutch - pushing that down lifts the handle on the motor, engaging the drive pulley.

The power is transferred to the main arbor by this v-belt ...

And there's the source of the trouble - the pulley on the arbor is not steel, but wood. I guess when I built this saw around 25 years ago, I couldn't find a pulley of the size I wanted, so made one myself. And it has finally decided to develop a 'Shake, Rattle 'n Roll' ...

I got online to try and find a replacement, but couldn't turn anything up, and it looks like I might have to make another one ...

But although I couldn't continue with work on the cases yesterday, I certainly didn't waste my time. Look back up at the first photo again ... what do you see sitting on the table?

Here's a proper shot ...

You know what these are, don't you!

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Tsushima-san's next print project ...

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With all the frantic work on the 'Arts of Japan' first print ... the wooden cases ... and the new tool set going on, I have been remiss in bringing you an update on what Tsushima-san has been up to since she completed her Hokusai surimono reproduction a few weeks ago.

We of course put her to work straight away on another one, and she has been beavering away at it since then. Here's a snapshot from her workbench this afternoon:

It's difficult to see what she is doing, but she is working with a very small brush, and dabbing 'just' a touch of pigment on it. It's for this impression, which is a very narrow gradation - difficult at the best of times, but here on a curved block to boot:

This is not easy at all. At the time I took these photos, she was practicing getting the impressions consistent from one to the next, taking dozens of them on sheets of scrap paper ...

The print itself will be familiar to (old) collectors of my own work. It is an image of a small Autumn Bonsai, and was originally part of my first Hanga Treasure Chest. That set is now down to its final three or four sets in stock, and I myself will of course never be re-printing it, so it's time to think about putting some of the prints into the Mokuhankan catalogue.

This gradation (on the ceramic tray holding the bonsai) is the final impression she will apply to the print, and after they have been pressed and dried, we'll sort through her stack, and get some ready for shipping. So it's time to open a new page in the catalogue for them!

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I mentioned in passing that I had been in contact with a Canadian living down in Nagasaki, and who owned a laser engraving setup ...

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It was more than a month ago that I posted about the production of the handles for the upcoming knife set, and in the comments to that post, I mentioned in passing that I had been in contact with a Canadian living down in Nagasaki who owns a laser engraving setup.

When I contacted him about the possibility of engraving our name on these tools he was very willing to give it a try. I sent some sample bits of wood, along with the information on what characters I wanted, and he soon sent back a little box with some samples. I was happy to see that the lettering was very readable, and that he had even been able to laser on the round surface of the carving knife handle, something I had been afraid would not be possible:

Here's a zoom-up on a couple of them:

But as you can see, although the lettering is clear, the wood is quite heavily burned and scarred. (What do you expect after firing a laser at it!). I wasn't initially worried about this, because my plan was to take the engraved handles and fill the lasered area with some material that would contrast with the colour of the handle itself, perhaps darker, perhaps lighter.

Here's the result of the first such test, made on one of his samples:

Boring. You can't even tell that anything was engraved, and it just looks like (slightly pixellated) printing. It won't rub off, that's for sure, but it's just not interesting or attractive enough.

So for a next test, I'm going to consider leaving the lettering in the un-filled state. But to do that, I'd like it to be lasered somewhat more cleanly than the original samples. Perhaps this could be done with a lower power, or perhaps by lasering not so deeply. I'll have to see what he suggests ...

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It's time to bring a bit of an update on the progress of the tool project ...

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It's time to bring a bit of an update on the progress of the tool project ...

I haven't been bringing you every blow-by-blow on the back and forth with the blacksmiths who are making our blades. The first ones we received weren't made to the shape we needed, and it wasn't easy to get them to understand just exactly what we wanted. Most of their experience is in making tools for carpenters, and a printmaker's chisels are used in quite a different way.

A typical carpenter's chisel - say, a mortising chisel - has a flat back, and a bevel. The back isn't actually completely flat, but is 'hollow ground' (in the case of fine tools). This is important for carpenters, because it allows the chisel to be used with the back face against the wood to be retained, and it can thus make perfectly flat cuts.

Our tools (I'm speaking of the chisels here, not the knife) are used the other way around - we place the bevel against the retained wood, in much the same way that a plane blade is used.

Here are a couple of snapshots - first, a couple of the tools in the first batch they made for us:

These would be impossible to use. The tip is completely horizontal, and the bevel is angular and harsh. Here are a couple of my own tools showing what such chisels should look like:

In any case, as I said, after much back and forthing, they have now produced a set of blades that match our requirements. I received the first shipment a few days ago, and took some time the other day to fit one set to some of the sample handles (and the most recent prototype case).

We still have quite some ways to go before we get this all figured out - the box is certainly not ready yet - but this is pretty much what the tools themselves will look like (these are not yet tied, of course; you'll have to imagine them with a yellow shamisen cord wrapped in that slot).

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