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Kakegami project launched! (and will you try some cookies?)
Posted by Dave Bull on July 20, 2011 [Permalink]
It's taken a while to get going, but the kakegami project has reached the market at last. Printer Tsushima-san was here yesterday, and ran a batch of these confectionery wrappers (now with the calligraphy block included) with no problems at all. This was her first time printing with sumi, and she found that it was not easy to get a smooth impression without having blotches around the edges of the lettering, but she caught on quickly, and got them done.
I delivered that first batch to local shop Arai Confectionery this afternoon. Mr. & Mrs. Arai, owners of the shop, have no more idea than I do whether or not this is going to 'fly', but they are willing to give it a try.
And now ... for something a bit different. By popular demand (well, one person asked!) we're going to put the cookies themselves - including the woodblock wrapper of course - into the Mokuhankan catalogue.
Here's the description from the catalogue page:
***
Ome Sembei - Box of 12 individually wrapped cookies (each 12.5 cm by 8 cm)
Arai-san's sembei have a kind of mild 'ginger snap' taste. The ingredients list on each package reads: flour, refined sugar, egg, sesame seeds, milk products. There are no preservatives added, and each package is marked with an expiry date six weeks in the future. (We fill orders with freshly-made packages, which we ship the same day, of course. Mokuhankan is not taking any 'margin' on these, and our price is a direct 'translation' of Arai-san's shop price, with the addition of 580 yen for SAL shipping.)
Here's the package as it comes from his shop:
After unwrapping the outer paper and ribbon, the woodblock printed kakegami is visible. It is folded around the cover of the box, which is held down with a decorative tied cord.
Inside are three packs ...
... each package sealed ...
... and each containing four of the sembei (individually wrapped):
Each sembei is made to look like three plum blossoms stacked up, but this is a single biscuit ...
We hope you will consider giving these a try!
Added by: Mark Mason on July 21, 2011
Hi Dave,
You mentioned in your previous post about printing onto dry paper for this project.
How has that panned out, and what changes did you make to the printing and drying process to achieve this? Would there be problems if the design included more colours, larger areas of colour or overlapping colours?
Added by: Dave on July 21, 2011
dry paper ...
Couple of things are working to make this possible: 1) we are in the rainy/summer season here, and the paper - as it sits on the desk untouched - is very damp already; 2) this is not washi but a machine-made imitation, which is both very soft to begin with, and which has a smooth calendered front surface; 3) we are not printing any wide areas of flat colour, which would cause the surrounding paper to buckle as they dried.
We're getting away with it for now, but I am not sure how well this will work come winter. It is very possible that we will at least have to do some misting of the stack before printing ...
Our purpose in using the paper dry is purely a question of time/money. When they are being sold for 100 yen, every few seconds count of course ...
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