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Block Party!
Posted by Dave Bull on June 30, 2013 [Permalink]
Yay! It's only taken me the best part of three years to get this ready, but our Meiji-era Block Party is finally ready to begin!
Long-time blog followers may remember that back in 2010 I introduced a very nice auction 'find' from my friend Shingo Ueda (who has prints in one of our partner shops). He had come up with a treasure trove of many thousands of Meiji-era blocks, which had originally been used in the printing of magazines.
They were beautifully made - carved in hard cherry. They were all 'type-high' and had originally been printed mechanically, either being placed together with metal type in each page layout, or being used to make electrotypes for printing. Once the magazine press run was done, they were tossed aside.
Here's the article I wrote about it at the time, over in my Encyclopedia.
Anyway, to cut to the chase, we've finally got things organized to start making prints from these blocks, and have now got an initial selection of a few dozen of them in our catalogue.
We're printing them on our best paper - our usual Echizen Hosho from Iwano-san (something these blocks could never have imagined when they were carved!) - and making them available in packs of six. While I was bird-watching yesterday, I spent the time programming, and have built a little web page where you can pick and choose a la carte from the current selection, building your own print set. Please try it!
If there is a basically positive reaction from people, we'll grab another tray of them from Ueda-san and get busy on more printing.
There is a hugely varied range of images represented: political cartoons of the day, maps of the (Russian) war zone, and of course endless scenes of daily life of the day. It's a wonderful treasure trove, and we're going to have a ton of fun working our way through it ...
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