The prints in this 'Small Print Collection' are split exactly 50/50 into two groups: five images of my own design, and five taken from other sources. When you saw the previous print, I am sure you had no doubt at all as to which of the two groups it belonged!

This one too I sketched myself, something that you can tell instantly when you see the tatami mat pattern, a kind of recurring theme for me in these little new year prints!

Japanese viewers need no explanation of this design, but as half of the collectors of this series are foreigners, I suspect that many of them may not know what this represents. The object lying on the tatami mat is an o-toshi-dama bukuro, an envelope holding the coin traditionally given to small children as a new year present.

When people are out visiting at the new year season, they prepare these in advance if they know there will be children present. I think that back in the old days these presents were quite eagerly awaited by young children, but I suppose that the 'thrill' is not so strong these days.

I have a memory from the time when I first created this print more than ten years ago - one of my daughters 'complained' about the colour when she saw it. "Dad, you got the tatami colour wrong; they aren't green, they are brown!"

Well in our house at the time, they certainly were brown! It was beyond our means to follow the traditional custom and have them all replaced (or recovered) with fresh new ones for the new year season. But in this print at least, the custom has been observed!

When I was carving this print I had to make a decision; what should I do about the contents of the envelope? I could perhaps have ignored that; after all, this is a woodblock print, and we of course can't see 'inside' an object depicted in an image.

Or can we? Make sure your hands are clean, flip it over, and take a look!

David
Monday, July 31, 2006

(Here's the print in context in the Small Print Collection.)

Posted by Dave Bull at 09:53 PM | Comments (0)

The print you see here is one that marked a bit of a special occasion for me - this was the new year card I sent out just as I reached the half-way point in the long Hyakunin Isshu series, the end of five years of work.

I wrote in last month's story about the way that my printing and carving work was held within certain limits while I was working on that series; because the prints were reproductions, I certainly wasn't 'free' to do whatever I liked with them. For the first two years of work, I stayed very close to the originals, hesitating to try and 'improve' on them, but from the third year, I started to pay less attention to the colouring of the original, by creating attractive colour schemes of my own - always trying to keep things within the overall style of the series.

After a couple more years went by, I began to be a bit frustrated with the lack of challenge in the carving, and as the fifth year of work began I made a promise to myself that 'this year will focus on improving my cutting ability.'

My prints were enlargements from the original book, and because of this, all the delicate hairlines on the original had become large and fat. I realized that there was no reason to copy so slavishly though, so one day I took a deep breath, and tried cutting the hairlines on one of the prints at the same small scale as the original. It came out quite well, and from that time on, I looked forward eagerly to challenging myself with each new 'head of hair' that came to my workbench.

(In case you are thinking that this was an unwarranted change of the artist's design, please remember that back in the Edo era such details as individual hairs were not actually drawn one-by-one by the designer, but were left up to the block cutters to complete. I was just continuing the tradition: 'cut it as well as you are able').

So of course, when the time came for making a new year card at the end of that year, I was ready to 'show off' my new-found carving skills, and created a design containing such small detail that I could barely see it!

David
Monday, July 3, 2006

(Here's the print in context in the Small Print Collection.)

Posted by Dave Bull at 11:22 PM | Comments (0)