But look at the email that showed up yesterday - from Richard Steiner in Kyoto!

But the reason I am writing now is that you said you could not find a wide enuf brush, so you have to cut your sheets in half. Many years ago, I visited a paper-making village in northern Shikoku (forget the name now, but they are good and inexpensive; many families doing the paper making, a similar arrangement as we find in Etchizen). We stayed overnight, so got to know nearly everyone there. In this town there was a sizing kobo, a large scale operation. On the day we were there, they has just received delivery a couple days earlier of a sizing machine which they had designed and had make somewhere. They were testing it out. A long machine, nearly fully automatic. Very cleaver design, with sprayers located above and below the moving sheets of washi. One man loads the hamper at one end, and another man (could be the same man) removes the sized paper at the other end.

Anyway, in another part of the building was where the traditional sizing was carried out. I saw a brush that had been thrown away and asked about it. Because the handle had split, it was too difficult to use. I asked if I could have it to use as decoration for my studio. OK, he said. And so it has served that function for many years.

But after reading your article, I thot that perhaps the brush would like to go back into service. I had already wrapped cord around the split, and so solved the initial problem. (Why they hadn’t thot of this, I don’t know.) Here are some photos of the brush. It is about 42 cm wide. If you think you can use it, I will mail it to you. Try it out. If it works, keep it. If it does not work, send it back to resume being a room decoration, or you put it up on your wall as an objet.

It was a dedicated sizing brush, so I am sure the hair and its thickness are correct. Let me know if you would like to try it.

I of course immediately wrote back to Richard, expressing my interest, and the brush itself showed up a few minutes ago:

There is good news and bad news about the brush.

So this certainly looks like a 'keeper'!

But there is a bit of 'bad news' too. Inspecting it carefully, I found this at the base of the hairs:

Mold.

Untreated, this is a deal killer. No way can we have active mold present in our brushes, either the ones for printing, or for sizing. The prints would never have a chance for long-term survival.

So I'm going to prepare a formaldehyde bath, and put this thing under to soak for a while. I'll then remove all the visible mold, soak it more, dry it off, then repeat. I'm sure I'll be able to get rid of the visible mold; the danger will be in what is left up at the roots of the hair mass.

But it's worth a try, as this is such a treasure! Thanks very much to Richard for being willing to put this back into service! [Richard's web site is here]

First, I've had a bunch of emails asking about the Playboy story. I wonder why! I have to tell you up front that this is nothing to do with typical 'Playboy' material. As I mentioned, they do a regular feature grabbing a few people who do a particular job, and put their 'data' up so that readers who are considering that field as a career can get a bit of an inside look at it.

Anyway, it's done, and the data for seven of us was published in the magazine yesterday. A scan is on this page of the Woodblock Shimbun section of the website. As it turned out, I am the oldest of the seven; the others are doing 'chalk art', 'spray art', acryl, and western painting. The lady directly above me on the page bills herself as being an 'Artist for Eros and Peace', which I guess might explain why this magazine chose her ...

Moving right along ... :-)

The Summer issue of the Hyakunin Issho newsletter is now online: [English] [Japanese].

It includes a story on the recent sizing experiments, and that leads me to the next item in this update ... the NHK project.

The producer was over here again today for another planning session. This is good news, as I have learned that the more time we spend in planning, obviously the better the finished program will be. But it actually caused a problem today.

I had done another batch of sizing this morning, for the paper for the second batch of printing on the 5~6 pair, and got it all hung up for drying just before he arrived. It's a dry hot day here, so I left the windows open up there just a smidgeon, so that the paper would begin to dry slowly.

During our conversation, he asked about the sizing (having seen it in the newsletter) and we went upstairs to look.

!!

It was bone dry. Every sheet, bone dry. And because it had dried too quickly, here's what it looks like:

Very wrinkled and distorted - exactly what I had been warned against. It dried too quickly.

I can't blame the NHK guy for this, as I myself would almost certainly have waited that long before checking anyway. But it's one for experience ... watch the weather, and crack those windows open/shut accordingly!

Anyway, as for the program, they'll be here for a couple of days in a couple of weeks for filming, and I'll then also be going to their studio on the 30th of the month for the 'studio guest' part of the show. Broadcast is unknown yet, but will be in January, on NHK cable channels overseas, and (probably) on the internet (although that will be a one-shot 'live' deal, and if you're in an inconvenient time zone, tough luck ...)

In other small update news, the 5th print in the Mystique print - the Hasui design - is online on the website, and seems to be in the hands of most of the collectors.

I can also mention that I have updated the A Story A Week website. I have heard from various people that they have had trouble putting comments on the stories, so I rebuilt the commenting system over there to make it match what we have here on the RoundTable. So there is no more excuse for not leaving your comments/criticisms on the stories now!

And finally, the 'countdown' is still clicking away!

But there has been a short interruption (where have you heard that before!), and it might be interesting to mention it here.

I was reading my Japan Times at breakfast the other day as usual, and it was the day for their weekly feature in which they focus on some kind of 'interesting' person in Tokyo. I've been featured there more than once over the years, and this time it was one Mr. Urushibara. I didn't read it all, but quickly skimmed over the beginning section; he seemed an interesting person - born in England to Japanese parents long before the war - who has made a life as cultural interpreter and translator.

After I finished the newspaper, I went down to the workshop, fired up the webcam, and got busy with the carving. The computer down there is also doing an automatic 'mail check', in case anything important comes in during the day, and when I scanned over the list of emails at break time, I noticed a Google Alert: woodblock printmaking.

Funny, it was pointing to that same story in the Japan Times! But that person hadn't been a woodblock printmaker, had he?

I followed the link to the online version of the story, and instantly regretted how carelessly I had skimmed it while eating breakfast. Mr. Urushibara isn't just Mr. Urushibara. He is the son of Yoshijiro Urushibara, the Japanese craftsman who went to London in 1910, and stayed for the next 30 years, passing on information on printmaking skills to a number of the early British woodcut artists: Walter Phillips, Alan Seaby, John Platt, etc. ...

I fired off a note to the reporter immediately, asking to be put in contact with Mr. Urushibara, and she did the job. Long story short, I'll be heading off to Tokyo in the morning, to meet him for lunch. He has already warned me that he doesn't have much knowledge of printmaking, as he was of course only a child during those years, but that's OK. There is very little known about the 'who' and 'why' of Urushibara-san's time in London, and I'm sure his son can help fill in some of the blanks. I'll take my recorder, and if he will permit, will put it on the table while we talk ...

I'll let you know more as I learn it!

But last night saw the final (embossing) impression, and the stack is now dried, trimmed, and ready for inspection and signing. And yes, it is still a kick - even after all these years - to have them all in a stack like this ... before they fly off around the world to their new homes!

I should perhaps mention something about the sizing - after all, this is the first time I have ever made a batch of prints on paper that I sized myself. The results were mixed. One the one hand, the experience was very positive - the paper printed very nicely, was completely stable through the entire process, and was very receptive to the pigments. But there were a couple of negatives: one was that the lack of sizing on the back side of the sheets (this was my choice) meant that I constantly had to use a protective sheet under the baren, and this is big nuisance when doing a lot of printing. The second problem was the inconsistency from sheet to sheet, due completely to my inexperience at brushing the sizing onto the paper.

So next time I'll have a go at doing 'both sides' sizing, and hopefully my brushing technique will steadily improve, so these negatives should at some point be a thing of the past!

Next job at hand will be to finish up the tracing of the sumizuri image (#6), and get going on the carving. (Again, these first batch of these two prints are being made separately; the second batch will be done together, as planned ...) Before that though, I have to get the summer newsletter written and produced, and catch up with all the waiting office work (invoicing, back issue shipping, etc.)

And there will be a bit of an interruption tomorrow, as some people are coming for an interview and photos for a magazine story. I mentioned in the comments the other day that when their request came in I had to laugh. "You want me? Really?"

Yep. People from Playboy (Japanese edition) are coming over tomorrow ...

So, here we are with what - I hope - will be the final entry in the sizing saga. I ran the batch this morning, and by just before noon, they were all dry. Here they are, hanging in my bedroom upstairs:

The job went pretty smoothly, and because there were 60 sheets in the batch - compared to the previous test batches of just a few sheets each - I was able to really get a much better 'rhythm' in the work. Some things I learned:

• I'm not 'strong' enough to make a good full stroke with just the arm, as the brush really has a lot of resistance on the surface of the paper. Shifting from one foot to the other as I move across the sheet (shifting the body weight), really helps keep it moving smoothly.
• The 'angle of attack' of the brush on the paper is critical. Too vertical and the sizing all dumps out quickly. Keeping the angle lower helps control the flow of the liquid steadily.
• After dipping and wiping the brush, you have to hold it horizontally in the moments before you make contact. If held vertically, it not only tends to drip, but all the liquid gathers at the tip, and then gets 'dumped' right away. Holding it horizontally until the very last second seems to help with this.

In the interests of 'keeping my options open', I sized only the front surface of the sheets. The tests the other day which had just a single face sized were no problem, so I'll give it a try this way first. If something goes wrong at printing time, I can always dry the paper off, size the back side, and then resume ...

So it should be time to move on to the printing, but unfortunately there has been another interruption. Some people from NHK are coming over tomorrow to discuss an upcoming show they want to do with me. I don't have many details yet, but this one should be of particular interest to RoundTable readers, because it is intended for NHK's overseas networks, and the program (30 minutes proposed) will be in English.

In the meantime I'll 'keep busy' by getting started on the keyblock for image #6, the one that shares the block with the Hasui image we saw earlier.

First step is to scan an original of the print, and then trace all the key lines with my tablet. Here's what it looks like so far:

After the non-committal results from yesterday's 'strip' test, I tried something a bit different today. After the half-dozen sheets from the sizing run were dried, I cut some pieces from each one and headed down to the workshop to make a real test - using some of my blocks to make actual prints, not simply test strips.

This was much more enlightening. We can dispense right away with the kind of comment I heard yesterday - about how good I am at this. This is very poorly sized paper!

It was apparent right away, as I started moistening the blank pieces before printing. Parts of each sheet took up the moisture far too rapidly, while others areas were more like what I am used to. Even after letting them sit under cover for a couple of hours to even out, they refused to do so. It seems as though there are areas that are almost 'unsized', and those places just suck up the water far too much.

I waited until it seemed to have reached a basic stability, then made a run of half-dozen copies of one of the little Gift Prints I have:

And here we have another surprise ... Even though the paper was clearly not 'good', the resulting prints came out just fine. And after they were dry it was impossible to find the areas that had been causing problems with moisture absorption.

So ... I guess I can see where this is going. I now know that I can produce prints on paper that I have sized myself, but I can also see very clearly that I really have to get the brush motion down much more smoothly. Given that I have no stock of other paper available, and with collectors waiting for the next one in the 'Mystique' series in a couple of weeks, I'm going to move forward and try a 'real' batch. I'll cut enough paper for the edition, and will include in the sizing stack a considerable number of 'practice' sheets of junk paper, which I will toss out later. Hopefully, after I get going on the batch, I can develop a basically smooth motion with the brush. We'll see ...

I'll start tomorrow morning, and will put the Webcam in the kitchen, to try and catch a bit of it ...

This thread about sizing continues here.

After yesterday's unforeseen delay (check the Comments in the previous post ...), it was back to work on the sizing experiments today.

First on the job list was a quick set of printing tests, using strips of paper cut from the sample sheets I sized the other day. I just grabbed a little blank strip of cherrywood, and printed it in a flat colour, doing it twice - overlapping to see how well the paper would take pigment.

I also picked up a nearby keyblock, and did a bit of 'delicate' work as well.

With all the strips from the 'junk' paper that I tried culled out, here are six pieces of Iwano's hosho paper:

1) light size, one side only, 1/2 recommended alum
2) as 1) but sized on both faces

3) and 4) as 1) and 2) but with the size applied more heavily

5) and 6) as 1) and 2) but with the alum at 'full strength' (1/2 of the weight of the glue in the mix)

The results ... well, it's kind of good news/bad news. The good news is that all these strips printed quite well. There were no problems with the paper sticking to the wood (indicating too weak on the front), tearing on the back (indicating too weak on that surface), or 'disallowing' pigment entry into the paper (indicating too much alum). If the paper I have been recently receiving from the sizing craftsman was all like this, I would never have complained, and never started this whole project ... So the short story is that this is going to work! Woot!

But now, the bad news. I can't tell the difference between these test strips! Some have double the alum. Some have double the amount of size. And none of them were brushed nice and smoothly, as you saw the other day. But they all came out pretty much the same ...

Hmmmm ...

In any case, I made another practice run today. I have to get the brushing better, no doubt about that. And I added another variable to the mix: doing some sheets on the second face right away, and some after the first had dried. We'll see if that makes a detectable difference.

This thread about sizing continues here.

And to finish off today ... an update ...

After all the preparation, it was finally time today to give my new sizing 'system' its first test!

I spent most of the afternoon at it, and I can tell you - this is not an easy job! Not that I thought it would be, but it has nonetheless made me realize that this is going to need a lot of practice to pull off properly. After all, I'm trying to make the jump from 'zero' to 'professionally acceptable' all in one go ...

Anyway, I did indeed take a lot of photos as I went along (with my camera's self-timer), but instead of putting them here on the RoundTable, where they will soon disappear into the untraceable maze, never to surface again, I thought it would make more sense to put them in a 'Sizing Process' page over in my Encyclopedia.

So please jump over there and have a look:

This thread about sizing continues here.

The delivery man knocked at the door this morning - as the 'just in time' system keeps ticking along. He brought the solution for the question of how to heat the sizing mixture in its tray. This should do it:

That doesn't tell you much I suppose, so let's get it unwrapped ...

Yes, a new Zojirushi table hot plate. It all fits together into a nice package for storage: ribbed steak grilling tray, grease catching tray, some other parts I can't really identify well, and ... a flat griddle, with 2cm raised edges!

No use for the steak stuff (not today, anyway!) so I put those parts aside, and set up the plain tray. After filling it with water, I put two small wooden 'feet' in, stood my own new tray on top with three litres of water inside, and then fired it up, using the 'warming' setting (as low as it would go).

It didn't take more than a few minutes for the whole system to stabilize ... at just around the perfect temperature for what I want!

I had been a bit afraid that it wouldn't go low enough, but this will do very well. After watching it for a while, I think this is going to be relatively easy to control - I will have to 'top up' the water in the bottom tray frequently as it evaporates, but the system soon brings that up to temperature, without affecting the upper mixture too much.

So this will do for now. On the 'to do' list for next time I'm in Akihabara will be picking up a small microcontroller unit with a thermocouple. That will let me 'set and forget', so I don't have to watch the thermometer all the time. (Although after letting this test run for a couple of hours today, it really does seem quite stable just as it is.)

Sometime later this afternoon, there is supposed to be a delivery of some unsized paper that I'll be using for the first tests. I don't want to waste any of my normal printing stock (from Iwano-san) until I get the rough hang of how to use that brush. Until then, I'll use the time making up a pile more of the hangers (I'll need about 60 of them, as that's how many sheets of paper I plan to be running in each sizing batch), and continuing with the left-over book printing work from yesterday. (Ichikawa-san will be picking all that stuff up tomorrow evening, so I have to get busy to play my part in the 'just in time' game ...

This thread about sizing continues here.

I went back up to the 'home center' this morning, to make a final decision on what to use for the heating tray. One day last week I had hopped on the bike and headed for a couple of local sheet metal shops - going by the listings in the Yellow Pages - but no luck ... they were all gone. And it's just as well really, because even if I had found one that could do the job, I know what they would charge - an arm and a leg. I remember when I had a similar tray made up for me around 40 years ago, for steaming and bending guitar parts, and that was around $20 I think, but there is no way I would ever get something for that kind of price these days!

I stopped by the local indigo dyeing workshop, to ask the owner Murata-san if he had any recommendations on somebody who could do the job, but he didn't, and he thought it would probably be 'around $400 ...'.

So it was off to the home center, to either get some supplies for making one, or to find something I could convert. And I found it straight away!

Of course, a large-size paint can! This one is not paint, it's thinner, which will clean out of the can much more easily than paint would, and it is very cheap - only 2,400 yen for the 14 liter can. I roped it onto the back of my bike, brought it home, and transferred all the thinner to an old 'poly tank' that has been gathering dust here. So I now have a lifetime supply of paint thinner ... not that I ever paint anything, but it should be useful for cleaning rollers and stuff.

Anyway, to work ... First step (after washing it out thoroughly) was to split it in two:

The metal of the can is way too thin to support itself now that the can is cut apart, so it's necessary to make a kind of frame for it. After notching out the corners down about 5cm, I cut some thin slots in four pieces of wood. Each wooden piece slots over one of the sides, covering up the raw edge, and the metal is hammered and rolled over a couple of times.

I repeated this for each side, and then securely screwed them all into place from the inside.

After cleaning up the corners a bit, it starts to look like a sizing tray! It's very 'tight', completely waterproof of course, and sits perfectly flat on the table.

I fitted a stainless steel rod across the top, to act as a 'wipe-off' bar:

And here she is, posed with my new dosabake (sizing brush), ready for action!

This thread about sizing continues here.

With the colour blocks for the Hasui design now done, it's time to put on another hat and get the sizing project moved forward a bit.

I took a trip to the local 'home center' to pick up some of the small supplies I will need, and to see if I could find anything that might be useable for the heating pan.

First, the easy part. How to hang and dry the sized paper?

Keeping in mind that one of the problems I have recently had with the paper I received from Misawa-san was the clip marks, I hunted around for something that wouldn't leave any ridges. Found it!

They look like normal (plastic) clothespins, but are designated 'for lingerie'. They have no ridges, just a smooth plastic surface inside the clip!

I bought a bunch, and when I got home, cut some small wood strips, screwed a clip to each end, and made a pile of little 'hangers':

The reason for making these is that unlike Misawa-san, who does the hanging job together with his wife ...

... I'm here alone. But it seems to me that I can simply clip one of these hangers to the top sheet of wet paper on the stack, and then hang it up by myself ...

As for where to hang it, I went upstairs to my 'bedroom', rigged up a bunch of hooks on rails on each side of the room, stretched a few sample strings between them, and tried it out. (This is just two sheets of dry paper, as a test ...)

That room is up on the 4th floor - very airy - and has two windows, which should allow me to control the drying rate pretty well I think. (Although I can already see that the strings will need to be tighter ... It's very damp here these days, and they lost tension straight away ...)

Tomorrow's job is to build the heating tray, and I'm still not sure how to go about that. I was thinking about using an IH hot plate, but after asking some questions on my favourite online 'help site', it seems that this might not be the best approach ... Any advice here would be welcome!

This thread about sizing continues here.

First is the key block, with the Hasui image visible on the right half. The design for image #6 will later be cut onto the blank left side:

The next photos are five sides of three pieces of wood (I'm still not quite finished the sixth side). These are the colour zones for the Hasui image. They are cut onto the blocks in 'heads and tails' fashion, with registration marks at both ends of each face.

The two designs will stay together through the whole printing process though, because they have to get the final embossed pattern together, and will then be cut apart as usual after drying.

The reason for doing it this way is the large number of impressions that the Hasui print is probably going to need - maybe 15 or so. If it were paired with an image that also needed many impressions, the overall total would be too many for safety in this hot season. (The paper would have to stay moist just too long ...)

So I paired these up - the print with many impressions together with one with few impressions. The Hasui will be the August print (and I'm studying the daily 'storm cloud' sunsets that we've been having all week long, for ideas on the colouring ...)

While the carving is going on, I'm trying to move forward on getting the paper sizing organized. I dug back into my photo albums from years ago, and found some snapshots taken on a visit to Misawa-san, the man who has done most of our sizing for the past couple of decades.

Here is a series giving an overview of the process. The size is prepared and poured into a metal 'bucket', which has an electric heating element to keep it at the suitable temperature. After dipping his brush, he wipes on the bar to remove excess:

Then makes the stroke across the paper surface:

He moves quickly at first, but then as the brush unloads, makes the end of the stroke more slowly, trying to ensure that the size is evenly distributed.

Then held it together, lifted it up, and clipped it to the strings running across the ceiling:

The windows of the room were opened 'just enough' to allow the paper to dry at the proper rate ... not too slowly, not too quickly.

Looking closely at that photo, I see that the sheets seem to be hanging in pairs, although what stops them from sticking together, I can't imagine.

And here are his brushes ...

At this point - looking at that photo of the brushes - I have to mention that I made a quick trip to Tokyo the other day, stopping off at the brush shop. I need to order a replacement mizubake (water brush) for my daily use, and of course, I need something for doing this sizing.

When I asked him about getting a nice wide brush like the ones you see in this photo he just laughed. He hasn't made anything like that for decades, and when I mentioned that 'Well, this is your chance!' he just shrugged. No. 'Can't get the wood,' he mumbled.

I offered to find some wood for it, but he wouldn't be pushed. He is something over 80 - I wrote about him here nearly 20 years ago - and I suppose I can understand his point of view. Who needs this kind of 'trouble' at that age ...

So I bought the widest one he had, which is just a bit short of one 'shaku' (they don't talk centimetres, etc. over there). This is too narrow to do a sheet of paper in a single pass, so I'm going to have to cut the sheets in smaller pieces for my experiments. (There is absolutely no way that you can make multiple passes on wide paper with a narrow brush and expect it to work. You'll either get gaps, or strips with heavy size, either way a disaster).

Next step, getting the 'bucket' made ...

This thread about sizing continues here.

Just before completion - with the small boats waiting:

And after washing (under the strong light bulb at night, sorry):

The empty zone over at the right is where the cartouche lettering will be carved later, after I get the master copy of the calligraphy back from collector Tauchi-san, who has taken on the chore of doing them for the whole series.

But I can get busy on the colour blocks while waiting for that to arrive. I think we are looking at 12 faces in all (including the key), but I'm not sure how many impressions it will be; there are going to be a number of gradations and overprintings, obviously. Here are the separations, ready to be pasted down (click to enlarge):

And here is one of the colour blocks, waiting for carving to start:

If you have been 'following along', you should have questions here!

That story mentions 'mid-summer' as the crunch time, and here we are ... The packet of paper arrived the other day, 400 sheets of hosho from Iwano-san, enough to last to the end of the Mystique series:

It is, of course, unsized, which I had requested, but it is also trimmed, which I had not. Back at the beginning of the year, when talking (face to face) with Iwano-san about this order, I very carefully gave him my requirements for the dimensions, going to far as to draw a diagram of what I needed - a rectangle with the dimensions (a size adequate for four of my print pairs), surrounded by the 'mimi', the selvage. But somebody in his workshop misinterpreted this, and trimmed the whole stack, removing all the selvage.

Does this matter? Yes, of course! When applying the sizing, the paper has to be hung up to dry and this is normally done with clips hanging from cords strung along the ceiling. These clips leave marks in the paper, but as the paper is (normally) oversize and gets trimmed at the end of the process, no problem.

But this paper is trimmed to the exact dimensions I need on the blocks, and is unsized. And what is worse, most of the prints in this Mystique series will not be printed right to the edge of the final dimension - which could help flatten out any marks - but have an embossed pattern around the edges. Any tiny marks left in the paper by that drying stage will be absolutely and clearly visible in the finished print. So clips are 'out', and I'm going to have to find another way to dry them ...

Um ... after I learn how to do the sizing, that is!

More on that, as it takes place over the next couple of weeks ...

This thread about sizing continues here.