From: Dave  |  Date: Feb 1, 2006

... but this year, by choosing that scroll, I knew that I was walking near the edge. I'll need to get some other sources of revenue up and running ...

One idea on the table is to start up a quick little venture with young Ueda-san; I'll carve some blocks next week, he'll print them, and we'll make up a batch of attractive small single prints packaged one-by-one for displaying in places where tourists come to get Japanese souvenirs. The stuff in those shops these days is complete junk - the unsuspecting tourists don't know what's good or bad, and the stuff is an embarrassment to this country. I'll be spending the day in Tokyo tomorrow inspecting such shops, to get an idea of typical prices, etc.

Whether or not we can do enough work - and sell enough quickly - to make up the shortfall in living expenses remains to be seen!

I'll probably do it under the Mokuhankan label, but the 'good' stuff I want to publish that way will have to wait a while ... (let's see how long a 'while' is! :-)

From: Gary  |  Date: Feb 1, 2006

I have some images that I think might make attractive little prints and should be fairly simple to carve. Take a look at Akaka Falls for example on my web-site, on the island of Hawaii page. If you would be interested in doing an edition for me, think it over and let me know. If not, fine too. Just know that if the going gets rough, I've always got something for you to do.

Mokuhankan?

From: Dave  |  Date: Feb 1, 2006

OK, I don't remember what I've shown you, and what I haven't ... so much stuff is cooking on the various burners of the stove here ...

Mokuhankan is going to start up this year, finally ... The first skeleton sample pages are up, although still full of missing images and missing sections: https://mokuhankan.com

Akaka Falls doesn't ring my bell - I don't understand what happens in the lower half of the print - but from the same page, Blacksands and Hilo Bay jump right up and say "Do me next!" ...

I haven't yet figured out a lot of the $ stuff - how much the costs are, and how much I can offer for a royalty per print, etc. Ueda and I are looking at a startup in March or April, starting with a 'live' event where we carve/print a small relatively easy postcard size print live on the two webcams that you see on the Event page. (orders placed during the event - with the order form that will be on the same page - will get a discount price ...)

We're going to start small, certainly in print size. The prints are going to be for sale one-by-one, not in sets like my own stuff, but I am going to offer cases (partly to try and encourage people to 'collect' these things). To do that, I'm going to make double use of the small cases that I have ordered for my Small Print Collection this year, and so the max print dimensions will be around 17cm high and 18cm wide.

Anyway, I can't talk more just now, I've got a s*#t load of stuff on the desk waiting to be done ...

From: Gary  |  Date: Feb 1, 2006

This _is_ new. You've talked about doing this before but it was

always something off in the distance, 'whenever you had the time' type

thing. I don't quite understand what the business is based on in terms

of prints. Are you pulling these prints out of your hat, printing them

with the web-cam on, and selling them via the internet? taking orders

for individual prints? soliciting prints designs from contemporary

artists?

Akaka Falls doesn't ring my bell - I don't understand what happens in

the lower half of the print - but from the same page, Blacksands and

Hilo Bay jump right up and say "Do me next!" ...

I didn't think that image was this difficult. The lower half is the

foreground path the viewer is standing on, with a rim of vegetation

before dropping off into the basin several hundred feet below where the

waterfall hits bottom. It is darker as it is still in early morning

shadows. However the other prints you mentioned, "Black Sands" and

"Hilo Bay" are also candidates. I just mentioned "Akaka Falls" as a

starter because it is fairly well known, and if one is going to do an

edition of a new print, one needs all the advantages one can find to

promote it.

Let me know when you have had time to give it more thought.

From: Dave  |  Date: Feb 1, 2006

I don't quite understand what the business is based on in terms

of prints. Are you pulling these prints out of your hat, printing them

with the web-cam on, and selling them via the internet? taking orders

for individual prints? soliciting prints designs from contemporary

artists?

The goal ... the kind of thing you and I talked a lot about a couple of years back ... is to be a publisher of quality prints. But because there are so many (mainly financial) obstacles to reaching that goal, the idea is just to start small, with a few experiments, and see what sticks. If I don't get something started, and relatively soon, I can see that it'll never happen ...

So ...

• - select some relatively simple, small scale images
• - cut them myself (can't afford carvers)
• - work together with Shingo-san to print them
• - put them up for sale on the Mokuhankan website (no 'sets', just a catalogue of designs, one-by-one)
• - in the beginning, make them all within the dimensions I mentioned, and make a storage box/display case also for sale
• - to help get some 'buzz' going, do some of the work 'live'. The word 'moku' is also used in 'mokuyobi' (Thursday), so once a month (?) on a Thursday, do one of the live events ...
• - while this is going on, also package some of the prints like this:
  

  sample |

  sample |

  sample

... and see if I can sell them through shops here in Tokyo. To help get this side of it going, I would make sure that the images I select for these early experiments would be images of interest to visitors to Japan. Dare I say it? Tourist stuff!

I think - still not sure about this yet - that Mokuhankan would sell prints at both retail and wholesale. Once it gets running, I would hit up places like frame shops and galleries; they would presumably be interested in buying the basic prints, then adding their own value and selling them to their own customers.

Then, if the wheels do actually start turning, and a little stream of prints does start flowing out the door, gradually 'move up' into more expensive, more _interesting_ work.

I didn't think that image was this difficult. The lower half is the

foreground path the viewer is standing on, with a rim of vegetation

before dropping off into the basin several hundred feet below where the

waterfall hits bottom.

But I can't 'see' the difference in planes/depth between the vegetation and the distant valley wall. _You_ know it's there, because you've stood on that spot ... but I haven't ...

Anyway, thinking about the idea of using your images in this Mokuhankan thing ... although these aren't suitable for the simple stuff that I have to be starting with, if I can get the thing rolling, would you be interested in doing it that way?

As before, with our Canoers project, all rights would remain with you, I would just want 'permission' for the woodblock production; in return, you would get royalty payments.

I can't put any numbers down on the page yet; I'll have to do a good spreadsheet ... lay out the costs, put the wholesale/retail margin in there, and then see what kind of number pops out the top. How much the designer's royalty could be, I honestly can't say at this point ...

From: Dave  |  Date: Feb 13, 2006

Re, the Mokuhankan.com project... the website is coming along slowly ... I also put up a (very small) folder of images that I'd like to consider for upcoming additions to the catalogue, if the first batch of reproductions does start to get things going.

As I mentioned, Hilo Bay is certainly among them. I've got a few people checking the site for me, to see if there are errors, etc., and I happened to mention that 'coming' folder to a couple of them.

Interesting to have this in my email tonight:

Finally, if you decide to do the Hilo Bay print

by Luedtke on your new mokuhankan project,

you can count me in for an order (the colour gradations

look gorgeous in this print)!

How do you like that ... a 'pre-order' ... :-)

From: Gary  |  Date: Feb 13, 2006

Preorders are nice, that's something the designer never gets! The site

looks good and of course once you have more images to populate it with, it

will look even better.

What's your timetable for getting this rolling?

From: Dave  |  Date: Feb 13, 2006

What's your timetable for getting this rolling?

The crow design is being print now by Numabe-san. #2 and #3 will be postcard size, and the blocks should be finished tomorrow; they will then go to Ueda for a quick run.

As for Hilo Bay, I would like to get the main system up and running before starting it. But I hope that won't be long, just a month or so. So if you have a bit of time, please start to get something together that I can use for a master copy. I would like to make the print about 23cm wide (I'm terrified of the side-light gradations if it gets much larger than that), and the small image on your website doesn't give me enough detail.

From: Gary  |  Date: Feb 14, 2006

As for Hilo Bay, I would like to get the main system up and running

before starting it. But I hope that won't be long, just a month or so.

So if you have a bit of time, please start to get something together

that I can use for a master copy. I would like to make the print about

23cm wide (I'm terrified of the side-light gradations if it gets much

larger than that), and the small image on your website doesn't give me

enough detail.

My print image size is 4.5 x 6.5 inches, which is roughly 11.2 x 16.4 cm.

No problem to print it to the size you want and shoot it over. Just to

double check, you are talking 23cm. wide for the image itself, right? Or

is that the intended size of the finished print itself?

I wondered if you had noticed that this print is nothing but gradations,

going up and down and sideways too. But then that is fairly common with

me. Simplifying the design often calls for more use of gradation to

achieve some depth. I'm nowhere near Hasui's level of foliage design,

which I think is one of his greatest print attributes. But then was it

Hasui or the carver that was responsible for that???

From: Dave  |  Date: Feb 14, 2006

My print image size is 4.5 x 6.5 inches, which is roughly 11.2 x 16.4 cm.

No problem to print it to the size you want and shoot it over. Just to

double check, you are talking 23cm. wide for the image itself, right? Or

is that the intended size of the finished print itself?

Sorry, I was thinking 23cm as the _paper_ size ... Might be able to push it to 25 ... not sure yet.

I wondered if you had noticed that this print is nothing but gradations,

going up and down and sideways too.

Yes, there won't be a keyblock as such I think. I've looked at it pretty well, and I think I can minimize the number of places where two colour blocks butt up together, by underlying them.

I can't do that with the exposed brown earth patches on the far shore, but I think if they have a slight overlap at the edges, it would look completely OK ...

The only other really touchy one is the sky/cloud joint ...

I'm nowhere near Hasui's level of foliage design,

which I think is one of his greatest print attributes. But then was it

Hasui or the carver that was responsible for that???

Well he was working on a large scale ... quite a bit more 'space' for that sort of detail ... I don't think Maeda-san had anything at all to do with that ... it was all in his tracings/separations.

From: Gary  |  Date: Feb 14, 2006

Let me know the actual size you need the master in, and I'll print one up

and send it over.

You mentioned perhaps doing 'Hilo Bay' in a month or so, but going ahead

with the initial three now. What is the third print, as the third one you

mentioned to me was "Hilo Bay"? I of course like the wave print, the

parakeet print.... well......not my cup of tea.

But who drinks tea anyway???

From: Dave  |  Date: Feb 14, 2006

You mentioned perhaps doing 'Hilo Bay' in a month or so, but going ahead

with the initial three now. What is the third print, as the third one you

mentioned to me was "Hilo Bay"? I of course like the wave print, the

parakeet print.... well......not my cup of tea.

The initial three (or four, I don't know yet) are reproductions ... the block I'm trying to finish today is a pair of postcard-size prints, like stuff from last year's Treasure Chest.

I don't know yet if I _can_ do the Rigden Read print - I'm still trying to find out when he died. Britain is 'death plus 70', so it's quite possible that I can't touch it ... As for the Jakuchu ... I like it a lot; and I'm betting there are a lot of other people out there who do too!

This thread continues in Hilo Bay [2] ...