Woodblock RoundTable

Posted by Dave Bull at 10:40 AM, March 11, 2010

Unlike the previous Hanga Treasure Chest series, the prints in this one will have a 'unified' appearance. In the old days, whenever prints were issued in sets, it was common to include a 'cartouche' as part of the design, in which both the series title, and the title of each particular print, would be written. And so it will be with this series.

But with a slight twist. As has become obvious by now - from the images of the blocks that I have shown - I am making these prints in pairs. Not two copies of the same image side-by-side (which was frequently done whenever a high volume of prints was needed), but two different images from the series. Numbers 1 and 2 are being made together, then 3 and 4 ... etc. etc.

You have already seen the block for the decorative border pattern, and could clearly see the way that the two prints are arranged on the block. The next one to be carved will be for the border outlines, the cartouches, and the series title. But because the print title will change each time, it cannot be included on this block, but will be carved together with one of the blocks for each particular design. The cartouche block with the series title, will leave a blank space where the print title will appear later.

I made my first dummy images (the one for the pamphlet, etc.) using computer text output for the titles, but for the real prints, I am using real calligraphy. Long-time collector Mrs. Tauchi (who appeared in this newsletter story) has come through again with some beautiful work.

It is extremely delicate calligraphy, and contains lines far too thin to be carved on 'normal' cherry wood. I need something harder, and the standard material for this is tsuge (boxwood), the same wood used for traditional wooden combs.

This though, brings another problem. In the old days, the carver would look at a design, figure out what parts of it (if any) required boxwood, and then place an order with his block supplier for a plank with inlays at the appropriate place(s), all planed perfectly smooth, ready to go. But the last traditional block supplier (Shimano Shintaro) died more than 10 years ago, and in any case, he didn't do this kind of work anyway. Each time I have needed boxwood inlays in my blocks, I have had to do them myself.

Let's begin ...

'Stretch' to read the full entry | Separate page (with discussion [1])

First step is to work out the places where the inserts will go, and dig some holes (I use a router for this). You can now also see something else about the series design concept - each pair will have one print in vertical orientation, and one horizontal.

The holes are about 4mm deep, and I will be inlaying slips of boxwood about 5~6 mm thick:

I cut the pieces slightly oversize, and then use a file to slowly bring them down to the correct dimensions, testing constantly as I get close. It's difficult to get them exactly right, because you can't put them into the holes for testing ... (you can never get them out again). (I'll be using the reverse face of this block, so can't drill holes all the way through ...)

The final step is to put a very slight bevel on each edge, so that they just squeeze into their holes snug and firm.

When they are ready, I lightly glue them, tap them into place, and clamp them tightly until they are set.

I have no photo of the next step ... I can't do it and shoot at the same time. But it's not complicated; I just plane them down as far as I dare without nicking the main block surface anywhere, then use a light file to bring them down to nearly flush.

For the final step, I don't use sandpaper, as that leaves the surface of the wood 'torn', but take the blade out of the plane, and stand it on end to use as a 'scraper blade'; it pulls off the finest of shavings. For the final few strokes, you let up on the pressure, and nothing much more than 'dust' comes off the surface, leaving a very nice joint:

You can see the different piece of wood there clearly of course, but you can't feel it!

So there we are, ready for Tauchi-san's calligraphy (on delicate gampi paper) to be pasted down and carved.

Each time I do this inlaying job, I get a kind of strange feeling about it. Back in the old days (Edo into early Meiji) there were many thousands of men working in the woodblock field, making not just the famous prints we remember, but books, posters, wrapping papers ... anything that needed printing. There were of course dozens of block suppliers providing the wood for all this carving. Not much of the work (in percentage terms) needed these boxwood inlays, but it would still have been a common thing for the suppliers to do. They must have been - of course - very good at it.

That tradition is now totally lost. None of the carvers now working have any experience of cutting boxwood at all, and there is certainly nowhere that they can 'order' a block like this, even if they had the requirement for it.

So we have this bizarre situation where this Canadian guy is sitting here in this little workshop, and is kind of the 'inheritor' to that entire tradition ... all those thousands of terrifically skilled men, making all those famous prints that we now treasure. Their tradition is now still living ... only here.

Me.

I just can't get my head around that.

I don't mean to imply that I am the 'only one left'. That's not true. There are maybe a half-dozen people left who can carve at a decent level, and I'm not even the youngest (that honour goes to Koike-san, about whom I wrote more than ten years ago.) But they never get the chance to even attempt this sort of thing, as they never choose their own work, but just sit and wait for whatever publishers send them, and no publisher would think of doing work like this these days.

I was talking to carver Asaka-san (a very fine craftsman) about this a while ago, and he just shook his head in amazement at what I am doing. But would he like to be doing this? There is just no such thought ...

So ... it's just me. Tomorrow morning I will begin carving that lettering, full of pleasure at the feel of the blade slicing that beautifully hard and smooth wood, but also with sadness ... that nobody else also enjoys that pleasure.

Just. Me.

'Shrink' back down ... | Discussion [1]

Posted by Dave Bull at 12:47 PM, March 10, 2010

Exactly six days ago, in the previous post here on the RoundTable, I showed a photo of my 'office', with a woodblock sitting on the desk where I had just pasted down the first of the tracings (hanshita) for the upcoming first pair of prints in the new Mystique series. Since then, I have been completely silent.

Silent - but busy.

Hmm. It's a bit difficult to see the surface of the wood clearly with the desk light on. If I turn it off and leave just the light from the window, it's better: (these are clickable)

And let's move in for a closer peek ... (although at this level, it sure looks messy!)

I kept track of the time spent on this during the week. The 'gaps' are of course for other work ... bookkeeping, etc.

	Hours
Thursday evening:	4
Friday morning	3
- evening	4
Saturday morning	3
- afternoon	2
- evening	3
Sunday morning	3
- afternoon	2
- evening	4
Monday morning	3
- afternoon	2
- evening	3.5
Tuesday evening	3.5
Wednesday morning	4
- afternoon	2
Total:	46

So there's six days of my life gone ... in a pile of tiny wood chips on the floor around the carving bench! But it has been a most enjoyable and peaceful six days of work - very nice to be 'back at it'!

Discussion [7]

Posted by Dave Bull at 2:01 PM, March 4, 2010

These periods - the overlaps between the end of one print series and the beginning of another one - are 'the best of times, and the worst of times' for me. As much as I would like to kick back and relax after three years of work on the Solitudes print series, the deadline for shipping the first Mystiques print is just over three weeks away, and there's no sitting still!

When I came back into my 'office' this afternoon after a nice long bath down at the Post Office, I stood there for a minute looking around, and thought it might be fun to share it with you ... Here are three snapshots (click for enlargements), each one with an accompanying list of things you can hunt for, if you are so inclined!

wood swatches with sample wood stain colours for the Mystique box
'To Do' list
first wood block for the Mystique series, with hanshita pasted down
trusty Canon printer, loaded with paper, ready for the first invoicing for the Mystique series (probably later tonight)
small white box with Your First Print CDs, now getting empty, and waiting to be refilled from the stockroom upstairs
another 'To Do' list
Zoom recorder, waiting for the next 'A Story A Week' recording session, probably tomorrow evening, if I get the story done by then
one volume of the large 16-volume Kodansha encyclopedia, waiting to go downstairs to the scanner, for preparation of the hanshita for the second Mystique design
stack of Edo and Meiji e-hon, being mined for image ideas (these aren't mine, but belong to young printer Ueda-san)
bill clip (getting fatter by the day)

Now if we turn around ...

pile-of-junk Epson printer, spitting out another one of the hanshita, ready for pasting down
box of woodblocks for the Mystique series, just arrived from Matsumura-san the other day, and eagerly opened right in the entranceway, because he had promised me 'special hand planing by an expert!' ... [comment censored (save it for another post later, Dave ...)]
stack of moistened newsprint, containing the small slips of paper for the cover labels to be glued onto the 'Seacoast in Spring' books
batch of paulownia boxes for Solitudes books (five of them, from the first carton to be cracked open), waiting for 'touch up' sanding and general 'fixing' - as much as is possible, anyway
stack of sample alternate paulownia boxes for the Solitudes books
stack of 'art boards', within which the Seacoast in Spring prints have now finished drying, and are waiting to be checked, signed, sealed, trimmed, and FIRED OUT OF HERE (sorry 'bout that ...)
stack of pale yellow washi sheets for the covers of the Seacoast in Spring books, just brought upstairs after having been printed with the silver pattern
the first few 'returns' from the 500+ pile of exhibition pamphlets sent out the other day (whenever there are than many pieces being mailed, some of the address are bound to have 'expired')
tissue box, and associated garbage bag (earlier this week, the 'hinoki' pollen hit this area ...)
embossing press, ready for action on the Seacoast in Spring prints

And turning a bit further ...

stack of about 100 sheets of Iwano's hosho paper (not for me, but being sent to the [Baren Mall])
severe ripples in stack of 100 sheets of paper, due to completely incompetent sizing from Misawa-san, who is obviously coming to 'retirement time', whether by his own choice, or that of the market ...
sheet of blank 'hanshita' paper - laminate of extremely thin gampi and a thicker base sheet - ready for feeding into Mr. Epson
clear plastic folder containing completed tax returns, ready to be run down to the local tax office and turned in
calculator; hopefully soon to be put back in the drawer and LEFT ALONE FOR A WHILE (sorry 'bout that ...)
remnants of breakfast: coffee cup, and small cup that held some granola ... (I always know exactly where to find these, when I start hunting for them each morning ...)
second wood block for the Mystique series, with hanshita pasted down

But that's enough for now ... I think I had better choose a waiting job, and get to it! :-)

Discussion [2]

Posted by Dave Bull at 12:08 PM, March 2, 2010

I mentioned that I would show some of the proof stages, so here they are. A couple of notes:

most of these were not intended as 'finished' (possible) prints; they were made to experiment with some particular feature (or with something 'left out' so that other parts would be clear)
they were made in pairs, as you see them here, and in this order. The first pair was the very first 'run-through' with the blocks

If you have comments about any particular image, you can refer to it with by number - which you can see by rolling over an image (or clicking for an enlargement).

Discussion [1]

Posted by Dave Bull at 3:17 PM, March 1, 2010

The print is finally done!

'Stretch' to read the full entry | Separate page (with discussion [2])

Continued from [Seacoast in Spring - 9] | Starting point of the thread is [Seacoast in Spring - 1]

We got a bit of colour on the fish yesterday, and although that plain grey/brown tone brought us pretty close to what I actually saw that day down at the seashore, I think I'd like to take it a bit further ... 'artistic license', you know! Let's put a touch of colour along his spine:

And a bit of subtle colour on his underside:

I have no idea if these colours match anything that would be found on any of the fish in the area where I have been camping, and perhaps the fishermen among you are groaning at this, but there he is ...

And we have one more to finish it off.

I have reversed the usual procedure for this printing session - instead of beginning with the keyblock, I decided to hold it back until the end. By doing so, we get an excellent demonstration of just how vividly everything changes when there is a strong key line in place:

"I remember one of the 'lessons' that I learned on the first trips in this series - that if I stop moving for a while, and just sit still, things start to happen. So I plop down in the pool and sit quietly, trying to avoid making waves. My reward comes less than a minute later. Coming into view from 'out of nowhere', a minnow-like little fish - perhaps only about 3 centimetres long - swims into view, poking his nose into the crevices between the little stones on the seabed. He seems completely oblivious to my presence, and swims between my legs, suspended in the completely transparent water. I can't resist the impulse to see what happens when I poke a finger down into the water, and the result is predictable - he simply disappears ... instantly."

So there we have it - the last of the 12 prints in this set!

I have a lot to talk about yet with this series of prints, and over the next few days, I'll be making some more postings to discuss some of them, but right now this afternoon, there just isn't time for that. I have to get these things dried off and sent out to Ichikawa-san - who is still busy sewing up a batch of the books - and once they are out of here the first priority facing me will be to nail down the first two 'Mystiques' designs, and get carving.

The April 1st shipping deadline is not very far away ... and unlike this Solitudes series, which has had very flexible 'deadlines', the Mystique series is going to run like clockwork!

The thread continues in [Seacoast in Spring - 11] ...

'Shrink' back down ... | Discussion [2]

Posted by Dave Bull at 12:26 PM, February 28, 2010

Four more colour tones ...

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