Hi Dave,

I just bought your ebook and am so excited! I fell in love with Ukiyo-e whilst living in Matsumoto a couple of years ago. Anyway I'm back in Australia and am trying to find a supply of gampi to laminate for my first hanshita. I've had a look at [baren] but it doesn't seem to be available through there.

I bought the thinest 'tracing' paper I could find at a local art shop here, but it seems very 'rigid' and I suspect that it would not be very good for carving through.

So...
* do you know if [baren] ever supply gampi?
* do you know of any other suppliers in Japan that would ship?
* failing the above - is it likely that I could seach for something similar locally, perhaps under a different 'westernised' name or description?

Many thanks for a great book - I spent most of our national holiday here yesterday reading through it and planning my supplies!

James

Welcome to the forum ... thanks for the enthusiastic comments!


They usually do, but - as per Matsumura-san's instructions - they have taken it out 'temporarily', as he tells us that he has no supply at the moment. I have no idea when it is likely to be back in stock - a week, a month, or a year.

But all is not lost, as he does have the ready-laminated stuff; it's item #22 on the Baren Mall paper page. And they are very large sheets, so they can be cut up into a large number of useful pieces ...

Wonderful - thanks!

On the topic of cutting up larger sheets - are there any issues with cutting up printing paper? As I won't need 10 sheets of hanshita paper I'm going to buy some print paper at the same time and just want to make sure that there aren't any major issues cutting it to size. Sorry if this seems to be a silly question!

Not much to say, really ... I just use box cutters, etc. or whatever normal tool seems appropriate. There are traditional tools for the job - to make it easy to cut a stack of a couple of hundred sheets perfectly smoothly - but this is certainly not something you will need just yet!

Another thing to think about is to perhaps cut (or tear) your printing paper in such a way that it comes out with rough edges, like the original deckles. I myself never do it this way, but if you ask over on [Baren], I think you'll hear plenty of suggestions on how to do it.