Most of that work though, is on my own My Solitudes project, and thus doesn't help this Mokuhankan catalogue expand at all!

So I don't have a long list of new prints to show you these days; updates have mostly been in two categories:

• Books: I have put more books into the catalogue, both eBooks on printmaking, and my own A Story A Week collections
• Postcard-size prints: Using the blocks I used years ago to make new year cards, I have done some reprinting, and added some of those items to this Mokuhankan catalogue. These prints are available in the 'standard' Mokuhankan packaging, or in gift-wrapped form, ready for 'drop-shipping' to people as gifts ...

Just when some more new prints will be added, I really can't say at the moment. The Solitudes prints are taking so much work, it really doesn't leave time for much else to get done. But there will be more prints here sometime ... of that I'm sure! Thanks for your patience ...

I do all my own 'bookkeeping', but then send the summaries off to a pro for completion of the tax forms; I learned long ago that he can usually save me more than enough to cover his fee, and that's not even counting the savings in hassle and time ...

For the past few years I have been publishing my printmaking income summaries in my Hyakunin Issho newsletter, and I guess we might as well continue that tradition for Mokuhankan. (Not that there is much to 'show' yet!)

Here is a simple spreadsheet showing the main 'money in/money out' flow at the end of the first year's efforts:

I received an email the other day from a customer in England, Mr. Mark Mason, who wrote to express his appreciation for this material being available. He also mentioned "... purchased your 2 eBooks (Yoshida and Morley-Fletcher) printed them out and bound them, (I hope you don't mind; I've credited you on the inside cover) Yoshida is bound using a Japanese binding."

I wrote back saying that of course I didn't mind; this is the kind of thing I would hope would happen. I asked for bit more information on the printed books, and received in return a few photos that I'd like to share here. They look great!

But an opportunity has arisen to broaden the range of prints available - the first of my Surimono Albums has now become 'out-of-print'. All 200+ of the print sets I made in 1999 have now flown away to new homes.

There is just no way that I myself will ever find time to reprint those albums in their entirety, as I - of course - will always be busy with new work. But not to use the blocks would be an incredible waste. That hard cherrywood is capable of producing many thousands of prints, and with only 200 copies pulled so far, it would be a crime to let them sleep indefinitely ...

So, after consulting with a number of the collectors who own those albums, and hearing from them that they wouldn't have any problem with this, I have decided to use those blocks for Mokuhankan - it seems a common-sense thing to do. Years from now, after I'm gone, they will certainly get used for reprinting, so it only seems sensible to do it now, while I am able to maintain tight control over what kind of prints will be made from them ...

Finally! We have a print to inspect!

I got a couple of dozen scroll prints sent off to the mounting workshop two days ago, so that meant a bit of time available for this job ... I finished up the final colour block, got some paper wet, and started some test printing. Here's the scene on the bench - this is the fourth sheet off the blocks, and I think we're ready to go!

In actual practice of course, the number of prints produced is a finite number. Resources (and customers!) are both scarce at present, so the prints are being printed in quite small batches. If it should happen that we never really get enough air under the wings for a full take-off, then those batches will end up being the full 'editions'. If, on the other hand, we do get this thing up and running in a big way, further batches of all the prints will be run off as necessary.

This brings up the question of how collectors can identify the prints they have purchased from Mokuhankan. Here is a quote (reproduced here with his permission) from a recent email I received from one of the earliest Mokuhankan customers:

Your sales and inventory page prompted me to order this print. If sales do not take off I am assured of owning a fine rare print. If they do pick up I will own an early copy of a popular print. ...

I tell you this half in jest. I am not really shopping for resale value, but many people do. Some justify buying a print by pretending to know what it's worth and how valuable it might become. I have read your thoughts on editions and I agree with you. ... But, I guess you also know that adding pencil stuff (even on the verso) will definitely increase sales. I suppose you might have considered a compromise position that would allow you to keep your print run open, but also feed the collectors and retailers with a notion of scarcity. Simply dating the print will give them satisfaction, if you were to indicate the month of printing and the size of the print run, they would be even happier. I do not think it is the sequential numbering of prints that attracts buyers, but the certain knowledge of the size of the pool of copies. People, and some dealers, imagine a print without pencil to be a worthless investment, because they assume there are thousands of copies in the cupboard or in circulation. Of course this is rarely the case, but they think it's easy to knock out a few thousand to have on standby. And let's face it we are competing with machines that do make thousands of copies.

Not quite sure just how I've managed it, but the carving of the poem on this print is now complete! (No mystery actually ... there are just so many hours one can spend over at the printing bench before the bod starts asking for some kind of a 'switch'!)

Here's the poem ...

OK, we've got some results here ... Numabe-san returned the stack of prints to me the late last week, and the other day I got a chance to get them embossed with the title information ...

Here's how I do it - a quick photo taken looking down onto the bench:

The stack of prints is on the right, and on the left is a base plate of stiff card, with a registration mark and the two metal 'slugs' taped down in the appropriate places:

I just pretend that this is a karazuri impression - put each sheet in place, and give it a firm rub with the baren.

Here's a closeup of the right-hand corner of the resulting print:

Over on the left I'll emboss the Mokuhankan seal, although I'm still not sure whether I should put it inside the image area, or out in the margin. If it's inside the image, it will just totally disappear, but if out in the margin, it'll be a bit intrusive I think. It worked very well on the Hilo Bay image, with a smooth colour area for it, but this one is more difficult ...

Anyway, when I get a minute I'll try and get a proper photo of this for the web page, but right now, I've got to concentrate on getting these things out the door to the people who ordered in advance ... and who have been waiting very patiently for nearly half a year!

Sorry for the lack of updates recently ... just so much going on here these days! :-(

I snatched a chance to get away from my own workbench the other day, to drop in on Numabe-san to see how his proofing had come along. I found him working on an edition for a contemporary 'printmaker' (you know why I put that word in quotation marks!), but he had some stuff to show me. Given all the problems we have had with these block sets, I tried to simplify our work a bit and told him to focus on just getting a good clean print from these new blocks - using Mike's print as a target. We'll worry about alternate versions, etc. later ...

Here's a shot of his most recent proof, on the table beside Mike's original print:

He has come very close - he said the blocks gave him no problems at all ... stable, flat, and easy to work with.

He has prepared a set of pigment specimens to match the eight blocks; these are in the jars at the top left of the photo. Seems to be mostly prussian blue, with sumi added for the later stages.

If you look closely at his proof (the top picture), you can see a light blue strip along the top of the image. This is printed by block #0, the blank block in the set. For this new block set, Mike prepared blocks #1 through #8, and didn't bother to send a replacement for the blank one, knowing that we could use the one from the previous block set. But look at the difference in size! Numabe-san wanted me to see this before he cut it down to fit the new blocks.

Mike says that all the block sets have been cut to the exact same dimensions, and I guess that's so, but they sure didn't stay the same dimensions! Look at this next photo. The three prints are (from the top)

• one of my own first proofs taken from the first block set we received, made soon after the blocks arrived in Japan.
• the proof Mike pulled from those blocks in Kansas City
• a proof Numabe pulled from those same blocks, after they had been in Japan a few weeks ...

No wonder we were having so much trouble with them ... But anyway, this new set is working just fine. They are plywood core, which of course reduces expansion/contraction, and we have moved into the dryest part of the year, when blocks generally stay much more stable ...

I've given him the go-ahead to pull an edition, so finally, we're almost at the point where we can publish!

This thread continues in Aspen Grove (11) ...

The package with the new set of blocks arrived from Mike today!

They look very good ... still completely flat, not the tiniest warp or unevenness of any kind.

Here's a focus on one of them ... click it for a monster enlargement ...

I'll call Numabe-san this evening, so see what his schedule is like. He had mentioned earlier having time available in the second week of October, but I suspect that I've missed that 'window'; we'll just have to see what he says ...

This thread continues in Aspen Grove (10) ...

The carving has been coming along, very slowly bit by bit, sandwiched between work on the scroll and the colouring books ... Here's a shot of the completed key block. I forgot to snap it when it was fresh and clean; it has just been brushed with sumi to make the kyogo - the sheets to transfer the pattern to the colour blocks. (click to popup a larger image in another window)

Here's a clip from the description on the catalogue page:

"Unlike modern process printing, traditional Japanese woodblock printing requires a separate block to be created for each colour in the final print. Actually that is a slight simplification, as colour overlapping is also done, but the main point is that for each print I carve a ‘key block’ which contains the outlines of the design, and a group of colour blocks for adding the tones.

"Nothing special about that ... this has been going on for hundreds of years. But recently here in Japan, we are in the middle of a huge boom in Otona no Nuri-e, which translates literally as ‘Colouring Pictures for Adults’. (Adult in this context doesn’t mean x-rated, it simply distinguishes this material from the common children’s colouring books.)

"So ... put the two ideas together ... and it seems like an interesting idea - pull some prints from my key blocks, and offer them for colouring! And that’s what this little ebook is about ... a selection of five designs from my Surimono Albums print series, scanned from my key block images for you to print out and colour."

The price ... only $2.50 for a copy with classroom/family license! Order it here.

Apologies to those who have been following this thread - trying to follow this thread! - in frustration. We've got the train back on track now ...

After the previous set of blocks turned out to be unprintable, we decided to put them aside and cut another set, this time using cherry-faced plywood from Woodlike Matsumura here in Tokyo. This is the wood that I use for most of my own printmaking work; well-dried 5mm sheets of cherry, bonded under pressure to a heavy plywood core, and then surfaced with planing and then under-water sanding to a very high polish.

Mike was willing to use these, but requested that the final sanding step be omitted, as he wanted to use his own carving machine to cut a guaranteed level surface on the wood before cutting the designs.

So I ordered the wood ... It arrived in late August, and I sent them over to Mike (I don't even want to think about how much the final bill for air freight is going to be for all these shipments back and forth!)

So let's pick up the thread with emails ...

Here's a clip from the description on the catalogue page:

Description: This is a colouring book that uses 13 of the images from David's well-known Hyakunin Isshu hanga series. Each image is presented on a full page twice: once in a colour reproduction of his print, and once in black outline only, so the purchaser can create their own coloured image.
The colouring pages are printed on heavy stock, and are perforated for easy removal from the book for colouring. Either colour pencils, or standard watercolours would be suitable to use.

In other news, replacement blocks for 'Aspen Grove' were ordered, but have yet to arrive. Mike let me know that he has a 'window' of time available at the end of August, but I don't think that I'll be able to get the wood to him by that time, as there really isn't any way that I can afford to send the very heavy package by air.

And the long delay with the final stage of the Hilo Bay print is now over, and the batch has been sent back to me by Numabe-san the printer. Now to - gulp - pay his bill!