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Here we are off the
reproductions for a bit, and back to some more
original work. I use the word 'original' loosely of
course - I stole the idea from some textiles made
by a family friend of ours, Ei Yoshida. She was
(and still is, I believe) earning a living by
making very beautiful dyed silk items. One
trademark of her style is the white line that
surrounds each coloured area, and I found this
made-to-order for my next printmaking experiment.
This was our New Year 'card' for 1983 (I made
the print in November of '82). The Japanese
tradition is to exchange greeting cards at the turn
of the year, and most of these include the current
zodiac symbol. I've never been a fan of those
symbols, so my cards have always contained some
other type of image.
I have no memory at all of how many copies of
this I must have sent out to friends that year,
maybe a dozen or so? So I guess this must count as
my 'first' print ...
(click image for a larger
version in a 'popup' window)
The cherry blocks I used came from Mr. Saeki, at
the Yuyudo Publishing company in Tokyo. We had
visited his place during that three-month visit the
year before, to buy some of his prints and learn
what we could learn. He had encouraged me in my
goal to become a printmaker, and had supplied me
with some very very nicely seasoned and planed
woodblocks. In addition, he had also given me an
old worn-out block that was no longer of any use to
them - a key block to one of the prints in
Hiroshige's famous Tokaido series. I learned a lot
from studying that, as I was also to learn a lot
from another of Saeki-san's blocks some years later
...
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