The Technical Components Of Japanese Printing Methods In Days Gone By

Japanese prints are, till this very day, manufactured from etched wood blocks.

The process employed to create Japanese prints may also be called "wood engraving" or "woodcut printing".

A unique 4-step procedure:

The creation of Japanese woodblock prints calls for the union of several different tradesmen / artists:

#1. That of the designer: during the time of old fashioned engraving, the designer would paint a black outline on white paper in order to give an illustration of the ultimate picture to the colour printer.

From the 20th century, the designer usually paints a watercolor image. He then gives this to the engraver and printer. It is almost always the identify of the designer that history of art recalls (eg. Utamaro, Hokusai, Hiroshige and so on, these were all designers of Japanese Ukiyo-e prints).

#2. That of the carver: he carves, sculpts rather, blocks of timber, each block for a unique color to be used in the eventual printing process.

#3. That of the printer: he applies the colors on the blocks and then pushes each block successively on to the unique Japanese paper. He creates the various colour gradients, which were notably virtuosic in the "Shin-hanga" prints. These gradients are referred to as "Bokashi" in the Japanese language.

#4. The publisher: this is the "leader". He locates the talents required to produce these artworks; the designers, engravers, and printers. Then he places them under contract and coordinates them in order to generate the engraved artwork. The publisher's name is known to us only when the works are pieces of excellent cartoonists (eg. Tsutaya, publisher of Utamaro).

At the moment, the techniques of creating a hand crafted print remains as detailed above. But the twentieth century observed the birth of a new technique, where the artist / designer creates his own prints. This approach is now known as the "Sosaku-Hanga" (Creative Engraving).

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