![]() ![]() So far we’ve been discussing what is generally termed “original” within the scholarship of Japanese woodblock collecting: any impressions made during the artist’s lifetime from original woodblocks cut from the designs provided by the artist. These publishers could then publish their own editions of the design, however many they decided. Sometimes blocks, called kyûhan (“acquired blocks”), were passed on or sold to secondary or tertiary publishers. The principle of ownership was called zôhan (“possession of blocks”), which implied copyright and the legal right to publish images or texts from the blocks. Copyright law did not exist before the Meiji period (1868-1912). The publishers ( hanmoto) or publisher-booksellers ( honya) owned ukiyo-e woodblocks, not the artists, and so the publishers could do as they pleased with the blocks without any involvement of the artist. That output, that of the woodblock itself, brings us to the next part. to create the complete woodblock and print. The artist would create the design and then work with a team of wood carvers, inkers, etc. So far we’ve been talking about the artist, but in woodblock printing they’re only part of the process. The design is one thing, ownership of the blocks another Hiroshige pieces are a great example of this: if you look at Autumn Moon over Tama River you’ll see a wide variety of copies of this piece, all original to the artist (we have another variant here). in order to make it “unique”, but at the same time obviously the same piece. This piece could sometimes have a poem on it, include or omit special printing effects, be on different paper, have different color schemes, etc. Sometimes a piece was very successful, but the artist decided to take the original design and (with small alterations) might bring it to another publishing house to publish it. These are still original antique woodblock prints, but just from a lesser edition. In this case the same woodblocks would be used to create the prints, but fewer colors would be used, lower quality paper, and the general artistry would be lowered. What’s a publisher to do? Lower the quality. Same design, lower qualityĪ print design meets initial commercial success, but there is a lot of time, effort, and cost that goes into publishing high quality Japanese woodblocks. ![]() But in both cases no record of the total produced was captured, we can only guess. Other prints were commercial flops, so one a limited set of the print would be created. Some prints became popular at the time of their original publication, so the (original) publisher would choose to have their artists keep churning out copies. All antique Japanese prints were “open editions”, and there is little/no scholarship on how many of each print were created. In antique Japanese woodblocks (pre-1950) we will never see an edition number (for example “#4 of 300”). To begin exploring “is this an original antique Japanese woodblock print”, we first need to discard any Western ideas of prints. The other prints are entitled “Leafy Lullabies” (the crow is listening to, and looking for bugs under the leaves), and “Chrysanthemum” (inspired by a Hirosado print and an image of my niece).Utagawa Kuniyoshi – Tamatori’s Escape from Ryujin and His Sea Creatures Antique Japanese Woodblock Prints do not include edition numbers The first, “Breakfast Bee?” (the nuthatch and the bee), is in the Wingtip Press 2019 Leftovers print exchange. Here are my first prints using this process. San Francisco-based Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) selected Berkeley artist Miwako Nishizawa, born in Kyoto Japan, to create pieces for its 2016 poster art series using the moku hanga woodblock technique. McClains Printmaking Supplies is a good source for tools, blocks, and books about the process.Ĭarving can take a long time, but it’s an opportunity for contemplation, for “being in the moment” with your image, and the blocks eventually become works of art, along with the prints. As the images are all hand-pulled, moku hanga prints don’t need a press, and using water-based inks makes this for an easy clean-up. For multiple colors, multiple blocks are carved, with exact registration (kento) marks on each block. To make a print, the block’s surface is saturated with water color and nori paste, and then slightly dampened paper is laid down and pressed with a buren. The image, a type of relief print, is produced by carving away everything except the lines to be printed. In modern times the images may have changed, but the process remains much the same, and its simplicity is very appealing, requiring not much more than a block of wood, a cutting tool (gouge), ink, and paper. Moku hanga is a traditional Japanese form of woodblock printmaking notable for black outlines, vibrant colors, and angled perspectives (think of Hokusai and Hirosada). ![]()
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