Written on January 27, 1990 [Permalink]

January 22

Slogged away for most of the day at the poem, and finished it. Getting a little worried about the woodblock situation. I only have two left in stock, and both of them are more suitable for sumi blocks than for use as colour blocks. If Shimano-san doesn't come through in the next couple of days, I won't have anything to use for the colour block for this print.

Sent off a flyer to an art newspaper that I noticed in the library reading room yesterday. I think they are mostly into 'original' stuff, but maybe they'll be interested.

January 23

Finished off the miscellaneous clearing and the border lines. He's ready to go! That's one week, start to finish ... and Tenji Tenno [1-1] took a year... Got a call today from Mr. Fujimori in Nagano-ken (the guy collecting the '36 poets'). I had completely forgotten that last summer he had asked me to send him a copy of the Horikawa print when it was ready. I apologized for the oversight, and sent it off.

January 24

Made some paper wet, and printed a bunch of folder labels for Tenji Tenno, Ono no Komachi [1-2] and Kiyohara no Motosuke [1-5]. I've now got at least 30 of each label ready to go when orders come in. Prepared 24 sheets for a run of Chunagon Asatada [1-7]. I don't have any good ones left (the same goes for Semi Maru [1-4]). Unfortunately, my paper is almost all gone, so I can't make a normal run of 50 copies. Yamaguchi-san is supposed to be coming through with 300 sheets 'soon'. I sure hope so!

January 25

Printed the sumi - no problems. Picked up the enlargements from the photo store. They came out just fine, 'only' ¥40,000 for the set.

January 26

Ran the colours. Had a few problems with the registration, due to my stupid insistence on printing the face lines last, after all the colours are down. I love the slight embossing effect that results, but I think that it's not worth the inevitable spoilage due to the impossibility of getting the face colour in the right place with no black lines to guide it. Only 16 of the 24 are really acceptable.

January 27

Went to the convenience store to do a bit of photocopying (making a mock-up of the new pamphlet that I'm preparing for the Mitsukoshi affair), and found that the machine had just been given a once over by the serviceman, and was working beautifully - printing very fine lines. Zipped home, prepared a couple of dozen sheets of thin paper, and went back and ran off a hanshita for each of this year's prints. Now if only I had a pile of blocks in storage, I could paste them all down ready for carving ...

In the evening, started carving the little block for this year's case label. I want to have the label each year done in different calligraphy, rather than have them all exactly the same design.