I'll introduce them properly later, after they've been here a few times. One of them has made a couple of prints already, working over at the Takumi Workshop run by carver Motoharu Asaka. The other young lady has never used a baren before, but is currently attending the baren making workshop being run this year by maker Goto-san.

They are both interested in this from both points of view - having an interest in woodblock prints, and in wanting some work!

As you can see, I gave them one of our simpler sets of blocks for this first trial, and they made a nice little stack of prints over the course of a few hours.

And while they worked with me on the training, printer Tsushima-san borrowed my workspace and kept busy with her proofing of the Hiroshi Yoshida design.

I hope we'll be able to show some results from that fairly soon!

In other news, I'm having another interview tomorrow, with a young lady who we met at the Design Festa last week. She's coming to talk about working here ... and this time, we're not talking about baren work, but the other 'b' word ... business!

Also, for those readers who can read Japanese - some of our staff members have begun to make posts on a new 'Mokuhankan Staff Blog' that we set up the other day. Not sure if they will be interested in keeping it up, but I certainly hope so!