The company that made these for me definitely has a sub-standard idea of what constitutes 'nicely finished'. It's not as though I was asking them to 'go the extra mile' ... I just want them to 'get to the finish line' in one piece ...

So each box needs a going-over, and many of them aren't making the cut. I ordered 100, and have orders for 48, so the worst ones are getting set aside without any attempt to even try to get them in shape.

The ones that seem acceptable get a little touch up with sandpaper:

And then get their label glued on (on the flip side of the front flap):

They certainly feel 'empty' with just one book inside ...

... but should have a much nicer 'feel' once they are at home on the collectors' bookcases, with the 12 chapters nicely stacked on the four inner shelves (three chapters for each seasonal group).

Ten is all I had time for today; the shipping boxes are due to arrive tomorrow, and out these will go, to be followed by more batches over the next week or so ...

(If you already have that one, of course I can substitute something else ...)

For information on the series, visit the Mystique website!

And here is the finished block, after taking a trial impression for checking and adjusting:

Here are those first two blocks:

Those blocks are cut on a fairly hard cherry, but as the back sides were much softer, I used those for blocks that will be used to print plain colour. You can see where I ended up splitting some of the wood, and exposing the underlying plywood base. This is an 'unhappy' batch of wood (as I mentioned in a post a few days ago). Matsumura-san had them planed by a new craftsman he had found, and this guy isn't very good. That particular block has a cherry layer now only about 2~3mm thick, and it's pretty obvious what happened while he was planing it ... he just kept digging deeper and deeper trying to get rid of chips and scratches in the surface.

Anyway, that's the first stage finished - these are the blocks that will be used to print the outlines and decorative borders on all the prints in this series. Next step - starting tomorrow morning - the block set for the first print pair ...

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 ...

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.

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'!

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! :-)

• 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

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] ...

I've started this with the lightest pebble colours; now we'll put the more vivid ones in place. Some of them were quite a strong orangy colour:

And another group was brown:

That's it for the 'base' colours on the pebbles ... although we're not done with them yet ... Now to start to fill in the fish. First a base tone over the whole thing:

And follow this up with another printing of the same colour, but on a block that omits the fins:

So that has been four passes over the blocks today, with 112 sheets in the stack ... It's been a long long printing day!

The thread continues in [Seacoast in Spring - 10] ...

Although we have a number of different shades of pebble here, more of them are a 'sandy' colour than any other. We get some variation from the different grey blocks that overlay, and some of the subsequent colour blocks will also overlap some of them:

A kind of vermillion/salmon tint is also represented in the mix ...

Keeping on track fairly well, after the interruption for the Tokyo trip yesterday. I certainly won't be able to finish it by the 'end of February' as I had targeted, but it might be done by Monday, we'll see ...

The thread continues in [Seacoast in Spring - 9] ...

One more of the 'grey' blocks, before we start with the colours ...

And then, as promised, the first colour ...

There were five grey blocks, and - by coincidence - there will be five colour blocks (on the seabed). I don't have much knowledge of the geology of the area, but there are very visible layers of different colour in the cliffs behind 'my' beach, so I guess this is where the varied colouring of the pebbles in the gravel comes from. Even while camping there, I have seen very large boulders tumble from the cliffs and shatter into small pieces ... So I guess we are seeing these pebbles part way through the process of being turned into sand ...

The thread continues in [Seacoast in Spring - 8] ...

The reason I say milestone is because that's somewhere around the 'raw' break-even point: I will be making 200 sets of this series, and the revenue from 50 collectors covers the costs of getting the 200 from 'zero' to the point where the post office truck pulls into the driveway to take them all away: the wood, washi, mat boards, mounting, the shipping cartons, printing of the story sheets, part-timer for packing/wrapping, etc. and etc.

The next 'milestone' comes at around the 100 mark, where we cover, not the 'series' costs, but the 'David' costs. That's a bit more vague, because this next level of expenses is not so clearly defined, as some of them vary over time: mortgage, health insurance, taxes, etc. etc., but it's somewhere around the 100 region ...

Will I get to that 100 mark? I think so; I haven't even started to build the Japanese side of the website yet, and the 'mass' mailing that I will be doing to all previous collectors here in Japan won't be going out until early next week (I'll be stuffing envelopes, etc. all weekend). I'm pretty sure a number of those people will like to get this set too; I'll find out a week from now, whether that's true or not ...

So it's looking good so far - thanks very much to those of you who have decided to join this one!

**

In other series news, today I received the first 'dummy' case from the small workshop that is going to be making this one for me. I don't want to show a photo of it just yet, because you would perhaps be disappointed at the appearance - this is just a mock-up to confirm that the design actually 'works', and it is roughly put together from 'any old wood' that they had lying around the shop, and is unvarnished to boot. But I can confirm that it 'feels' great, and definitely 'works' as intended. I'm very happy with my design for this one, and even happier that I've found a place here in Japan to make it for me. After receiving it, I spent nearly an hour on the phone with the guy this afternoon, discussing various design points and construction and materials options, and they seem very responsive and eager for the work.

But when we talked about the cost and the payment schedule, it reminded me that I had better get my bookkeeping system prepared for this new series, so that I can get the invoices sent out for the first print and case, because until I get that part moving, these guys can't get started!

There's nothing much to say about these next two impressions - just building up grey shape and tone. #3:

And #4; I guess you can see where we are going with this one!

I'm supposed to be doing two impressions a day this week, but there may be none tomorrow; I have to head down to the Hiraki Museum for a 'study' meeting put together by a bunch of the people in the craftsmen's association, to inspect some of the prints in the 'back room'. The museum has some prints that are apparently quite well preserved, along with the blocks, and the idea is to try and study what pigments might have been used.

('Interesting' that I only found out about this because I overheard a couple of the guys talking about the upcoming visit while at an association dinner a couple of weeks ago. As to why nobody had mentioned it to me, I got the (typical) 'we didn't think you would be interested ...') So once I had wangled an invite, even though this is one of the worst possible times for me, I 'have' to go ... :~)

The thread continues in [Seacoast in Spring - 6] ...

So, after more than a week taken up with proofing and other 'irrelevant' work, printing is finally underway!

We're going to 'build' this one in a bit of an off-beat way. The print has a number of nezumi-ban (grey tone blocks to add shadow, depth, and variation to the colours), and it is usual to print those after the other colour blocks are done. But I found during my proofing that because there are so many grey blocks on this print (5), it made more sense for me to lay those down first, and then figure out the colour saturation later. At least that was how I did it for the more successful proof prints (which I'll show you later, after we're done with the printing run).

Anyway, let's get started; here's impression #1 - First of the five grey base tones:

And here goes #2 on top of it:

There is still a boatload of other work screaming at me for attention, so I don't think I'll be able to get more than two impressions done per day for the next little while. There are going to be 13~15 in all, so if I'm lucky, we'll be done around a week from now (there are 112 sheets in this first batch).

The thread continues in [Seacoast in Spring - 6] ...

For English viewers, I won't be doing a physical mailing - the pamphlet will be on-line: (Click this one for a larger image).

And there are of course more images, and full details of the series, over on the website.