I'd rather see you carving and printing than publishing spreadsheets with sales data. That, I would think, is private business information for your records, to divulge privately if you wish, but not necessarily to publish on your web-site.

I'd rather see you carving and printing

Well, as much as I'm sure you would like to see me spending time on the proofing for Hilo Bay that is waiting, that job is not something that I can fit into those last couple of late evening hours. It needs a couple of days of my full attention, which it will get when its turn comes!

(And I suppose a full-time computer programmer wouldn't consider writing php scripts to be something suitable for a relaxing way to spend time before going to bed, but ... 'one man's meat ...')

But to expand more on the thinking behind the idea of keeping that sort of data online ... If I think about the products and supplies that I use in my own life, they sort of fall into different categories as far as the amount of 'interest' I have in them and their provenance.

There is a wide variation in this, but let me take an example from each extremity to try and illustrate. I have no interest in fashion. When I get up in the morning, I reach for a shirt, and the single determining factor in which one I select from the pile is whether or not it is clean. Who made it, who sold it, etc. etc. is of absolutely no interest to me.

Moving over to the opposite end of the scale, the computer I am using provides perhaps the best example. To some people, the machine they use for web browsing, etc. is just an appliance, and all they ask is that it reliably work when they turn it on. But - and I'm certainly not alone in this - I actually have a very intense interest in this machine and in anything to do with its provenance. I do follow (within reason) such things as sales figures for Macs ... and, I believe, Apple is quite happy to have people like me as a customer. We're not 'just' customers; we (crazily or not) feel like Apple is something a bit 'special' for us.

Now you might think I'm drawing quite a stretched comparison between that extreme example, and the idea of keeping my own sales data online, but I think they are part and parcel of the same kind of thing.

There are certainly many (potential) Mokuhankan customers who wouldn't have the slightest interest in the 'back story' of the place, but I do believe that there will be plenty who feel otherwise. During the years of my Hyakunin Isshu poets' series, I learned - I certainly didn't plan it - that the more that people came to feel that they were 'part of' what was going on, the firmer was their support. And being as open as possible turned out to be key to this; the stories with the prints, the newsletter ... whatever I did that helped them see and understand what was going on here.

It was a simple step from there to putting the year-end financial figures in the newsletter, and then to this current suggestion of providing a way for people to follow the ups-and-downs of this new venture as it progresses. It's quite possible that there is a down side that I'm ignoring here; I can imagine both of these comments being made by people who peruse that data at some point in the future: "Look, almost nobody is buying that one .. must be something wrong with it. Forget it!" ... or ... "Look how many of that one they've sold ... everybody and his dog must have a copy ... Forget it!" :-)

Anyway ... just some thoughts on this ...

Well, that illustrates the difference between people's thinking, and preferences. Everyone has to feel their own way along, and if that way feels right for you, you should do it.

You said something that gave me an idea and maybe it's just nothing, but then again it might be interesting. This is the kind of thing that would interest _me_ as a reader and woodblock print enthusiast, so it's just possible that it might interest others.

You have documented the entire process of making a woodblock print in your encyclopedia, but I have never seen you document the real story beyond a paragraph or two as an introduction. For example, start with a print as if it were a person, and develop how the relationship got started, how you met, how it developed, how it affected you, what you learned about it, what you learned about yourself, how it fascinated you, what faults you discovered in it, what challenges it held for you, how your feelings for it might have changed after you got to know it better, and what you think the long term effects it will have on you are. A 'Halifax to Hamura" kind of thing only with a print. I think that would give people a better sense of being a part of what is going on that you talked about.

(I hate to add this but, you might even get stories from the designers along the same lines to take the history of the print back to it's original conception. That may be more dull however.)

Just a thought, and perhaps not much of one.

I agree with Gary on this point. About 20 years ago, I read 2 books by Tracy Kidder, "Soul of a New Machine" and "House". They are non-fiction books about the process of how things (in these books, a computer and a home) are developed. Very well done.

Dave is already an accomplished essayist. There is nobody more qualified to write an insightful book about the multiple processes (both linear and concurrent) which lead to the production of a woodblock print.

That's the point. Dave's got way too much free time on his hands. He needs another project to "keep him out of trouble". It's scandalous. He spends almost a third of his time sleeping! ;-)

2 books by Tracy Kidder

I know the genre well ... books that purport to be about some particular factual process, but which are actually about something much 'bigger'. Pirsig's 'Zen' is I guess the most extreme example of the type ...

The two Kidder books are here on my shelf, and well-thumbed ...

It's gone! The 'Soul' book is gone! Sigh ... same old story ... lent to somebody, never to be seen again ... We never learn, do we!

But your point about such a book being possible for this craft is one that I have been pondering for many a year now. There's no question at all in my mind that there is such a book just waiting to be written. The topic in question - the position/status/possibilities of these traditional prints in contemporary society - is certainly deep enough, and then when you overlay it with the 'personal quest' angle, and toss in 'just enough' technical stuff to make a good balance, and the sky's the limit for this one!

Problem is though, it would need a very skilled writer to pull it off, and I don't know ...

Gary wrote:

you might even get stories from the designers along the same lines to take the history of the print back to its original conception

Now this is interesting to hear. I've just wasted over an hour searching through my email archives looking for a particular exchange you and I had some years back. I couldn't find it unfortunately, but I remember the gist: I was trying to convince you to put more ancillary material on your website, to go along with the prints and make them more approachable, and you resisted mightily. "The images have to stand alone; if they need words to explain them, then it means I've failed ..." you said, or something like that ...

Ready to do a bit of writing now?

Dave's got way too much free time on his hands. He needs another project to "keep him out of trouble". It's scandalous. He spends almost a third of his time sleeping!

Well, this is what Mokuhankan is all about, isn't it! The 'plan' is to get to the point where I just sit back and get other people to do all the printmaking work. I'll just sit back and count the money ... Then I'll have time to get my typewriter out! :-)

But you know, during that little search I just made deep into the depths of the hard drive here I bumped into all kinds of postings/emails/letters which touched on similar matters. I wonder perhaps, if that 'book' isn't perhaps already mostly written, and just waiting to be 'assembled'?

I was trying to convince you to put more ancillary material on your website, to go along with the prints and make them more approachable, and you resisted mightily. "The images have to stand alone; if they need words to explain them, then it means I've failed ..." you said, or something like that ...

Oh my god! Now I'm given to eat my own platitudes! :) This alone should teach one never to write anything. And, (gulp) I think you are pretty accurate in your recollections!

I did say something pretty darn close to that but at the time I wasn't thinking in terms of anyone collecting my work, just looking at it. In terms of understanding the content of it, no explanations should be necessary, they would be redundant at best. If I should ever be fortunate enough to have people wanting to collect my work, then that opens a broader field of curiosity. I guess while I always found personal stories of others interesting to me, I never thought my personal view would be of any interest to anyone else. When _you_ write something, Dave, I find it interesting. When I write something, it covers what I am already aware of and therefore it doesn't offer any novelty of thought to me which I find interesting in other people's writing. But then, who knows, maybe you think the same thing.

Gary has chosen to provide some background on the genesis of the Hilo Bay design, and the new page is linked from the Hilo Bay page of the catalogue.