inside a Kyoto print studio

Here's a bit of nostalgia I've been meaning to share.

I took these photos in about 2003 when I was living in Kyoto, Japan. This is the inside of a traditional Japanese woodblock printing studio in the centre of Kyoto. I was very priviledged to go with my woodblock printing sensei (teacher) to meet Sato-san whose studio this is. I spent the morning there watching everyone work. Incredibly, there were 5 people working together in this intimate little studio. It was amazing to watch. Every square inch was crammed with materials and yet people seemed to be very happy and calm as they worked together printing woodblocks. The skill level was phenomenally high, leaving me feeling like a lazy printmaker when I left.

The quality of these photos isn't great - I had to scan them as this was pre-digital camera for me.

You can see more recent photos of Sato-san printing here on Annie's blog.

kyoto design house

A little glimpse inside the beautiful world of Kyoto Design House. There are things there so lovely that they will make you weep with joy. Promise! Located in a new building designed by Tadao Ando, this wonderful contemporary design space on Tomonokoji (just south of Oike) is a must visit if you're in Kyoto. And opposite is Benrido, the prettiest postcard shop you've ever seen. That's another promise.

Those first 2 pics are of boxes for sweets. So colourful! The ceramics could have burnt a hole in my pocket there were so many things I wanted to take home with me. Luckily, restraint ruled the moment and I left with just one beautifully crafted off-white porcelain cup.

aizen kobo

In Kyoto last week I went along to Aizen Kobo, a natural indigo dyeing workshop in an old machiya house, located in the Nishijin textile district. Owned by indigo dyer, Kenichi Utsuki, this place was a real pleasure to visit. Ken-san is very passionate about natural indigo dyeing and will patiently talk you through the difference between what he does and chemical indigo dyeing processes. His kobo (workshop) is located in a very large machiya which is pure bliss to explore with Ken as he shows you samples of the fabrics he has dyed and his wife Hisako has designed into finished products.

The white fabrics in the top pic show Japanese style shibori before it has been dyed. Check out those tiny little knots!!!! Underneath those fabrics sit ones which have been dyed a rich indigo blue using the natural dyeing process. I asked Ken how he was able to make the vivid green in the scarf (2nd pic) and to my surprise he said by combining indigo with the dye from gardenia seed.
Check out these vats of indigo dye in the process of fermenting! I won't lie - they did smell a bit as you would expect from a natural fermentation process.And here is the front of the machiya where Ken's kobo is located. He has a lovely shop in the front where you can go crazy looking at all that gorgeous shibori dyed fabric he has on offer. Needless to say I did not leave empty handed.

two things

A place to draw breath on a busy day in Kyoto: Nanzenji. With autumn approaching in the northern hemisphere and along with it the spectacular visual feast that is momiji you need to get there early in the morning though. Before 9am or it's very, very crowded.
A big thanks to the ever generous Holly from Decor8 for posting my 2011 calendar in her annual calendar round up. There are some gorgeous calendars out there this year! There is still time to purchase one if you're thinking of giving it as a gift for the coming holiday season.

More pics from Kyoto to follow.......

zakka

Oh my goodness what I wonderful trip I've had (to Kyoto). Fabulous, every second of it. So much has changed and yet so many things are still as they were all those years ago. Many thanks to friends who fed me during my stay. You're all so sweet.

If I could sum it up in one work it would definitely be 'zakka'. Zakka is about so many things in contemporary Japan. By the time I had left I was feeling sucked into its beautiful vortex and wishing I could bring it back to Melbourne with me to enjoy.

Which I can in a small way as Mr Kitly is opening soon in Brunswick. Stay tuned as this project from ii ne kore unfolds in December.

Speaking of zakka, I fell head over heals in love with NID magazine while in Japan. All pics posted here are from edition 17.

a womb/kyoto loveliness

I'm starting to make a list of my favourite places to visit when I go back to Kyoto later this year. One place I adored and became a regular of was A Womb on the north eastern side of the city. It's incredible and not at all womb-like. In fact the interior is stark and modern but at the same time also incredibly serene. They serve sushi like you've never ever experienced anywhere else. It's so gorgeous to look at and presented like artwork. One time they made me and my guest a special dessert that was a landscape of the most incredibly delicious and beautiful sweet morsels.

I'll be heading there for the sushi kaiseki.

They also have a blog.

morioka teapot

Covet: Morioka southern iron kettle teapot.

ii ne kore reminded me of keibunsha, a treasure trove of goodness in Kyoto. I especially love the way the old floor boards in the gallery squeak as you walk on them. And now I'm contemplating how to carry back an iron teapot in my luggage when I visit Kyoto later this year. I've carried some heavy and not-very-portable things between Japan and Australia over the years. A rice cooker was one. Also delicate pottery (in my carry-on) and rolls of washi paper. So I'm not particularly phased by this potential new challenge. The real question is how many red teapots can a girl own? I have one already. It's not iron though!

macha froth

I'm craving a really good cup of macha today. The kind that you can make yourself in Ippodo in Kyoto and you can drink along with a delicious Japanese sweet. It looks just like this pic from Ippodo too. All frothy and gorgeous green. I think the craving is because I had a late night and for me a cup of good macha is a tonic like the way some people eat big greasy breakfasts. Weird I know but it works for me. So does the Ippodo website. It's too cute for words. So I've taken a few illustrations from it to share with you here.

sento in art

This ukiyoe print (click to view larger size) is an old one by Kunisada and happens to be one of my favourites. It's a quite a wide print so it's hard to see the full view here but I did notice that someone lovely has put it up on flickr in sections (see 2nd row of prints). I bought a copy of this print while living in Japan because it reminded me so much of my daily journey to the local public bathhouse (sento) to bathe as I didn't have a bathroom in my teeny tiny Kyoto apartment. In the full print you can see some of the antics of the local women as they bathe together. The sento is a lively place, that's for sure. Women (and men but not together) gather nightly to catch up on the day's news with each other, gossip a little, relax and wash! And I LOVED it all. Even on the coldest of winter's nights when the last thing I wanted to do is walk 3 mins down the road for a bath, going there and soaking in those tubs was the best way to treat a tired body and was like a big sleep sedative.

sento love

Yesterday's article in the The Age about an Australian using a Japanese sento for the first time made me quite homesick for my other home, Kyoto. And then I found all these cool sento images on ii ne kore and they made me sink deeper into my 'natsukashi' moment. You see, I love the sento/onsen experience so much I made 3 woodblock prints about them when I was living in Kyoto (see pics above): Sento 1, 2 & 3.

For the 7 years I lived there I didn't have a bathroom in my tiny apartment and so I used the local sento every night (I was lucky to have 3 in my neighbourhood which I nicknamed: clean but mean; dirty but friendly; and just heavenly but a little too far to go). So you see, the sento and me, well, we became quite intimate. I even made friends at the sento. One Japanese woman who I'd made idle chit chat with in the bath over the years thought, up until the evening before I left the country for good, that I was French (we only spoke in Japanese). When I told her I was going to Australia she looked surprised and asked me why. When I told her it was where I was from she was really very shocked. All those years she thought I was a French woman! I wonder what that says about my Japanese pronunciation?

a little piece of vintage japan

I've stumbled upon something lovely via the internet. A place called Sri Threads in Brooklyn which is a little bit of vintage Japan and India. The image above is from an early 20th century sample book of silk screen textile prints.

This one is an "old sample book which shows 68 different samples of silk dyed with individual samples of 'komon' or the small figured patterns" which were very common in the late 18th century through to the mid 19th century. Each design was made by screen printing through a hand cut paper stencil. The stencils themselves are gorgeous. I have 2 paper stencils used for printing kimono textile designs framed in my house which I bought from a temple market in Kyoto about 5 years ago. This process is no longer used for patterning textiles in Japan as things have become quite high tech these days.

This little piece of antique stitched fabric is a repaired early to mid 20th century sake straining bag. Yes, that's right - used to strain sake in the process of making it! These bags are known as sakabukuro and are apparently very collectible items. This one has been repaired in 11 different places and stained with green persimmon tannin.

For more gorgeous vintage textile wonders visit Sri Threads. Or if you're lucky enough to live in Brooklyn or Manhattan they're physically located in Greenpoint, Brooklyn so you can even check out their textiles in person.

printmaking in japan

I was having an 'I miss Japan' day today and so thought I'd check out what my Kyoto-based printmaking friend Richard Steiner has been up to lately. Even though the print above is from 2004 (titled: Harvest View) I hadn't seen it before so I was really excited to stumble across it via Richard's website.

And Richard also has info about KIWA (Kyoto International Woodprint Association) that's worth checking out. KIWA exhibitions happen every 4 years and the next one is scheduled for 2011. The rules for print entires are listed here. Who knows, with this kind of lead time even I might be able to enter a print if I get cracking.

kimono cards for Readings

I was knee deep in my stash of vintage kimono fabric today making a new group of cards for a Readings bookshop order and thought I'd take a few shots of their gorgeous colours before I stamp them with my hanko and pack them with their envelopes. I'm always amazed at the gentle beauty in the old style kimono fabric.

The kimono fabric comes from Kyoto and here are some of my favourites:

They'll be available along with a range of my hand printed woodblock cards in Readings, Carlton late next week. That's in Melbourne in case you were wondering.....

moku hanga (Japanese woodblock printing)

People often ask me about the process of making a Japanese woodblock print. Other kinds of printmaking techniques like etching are more well known than woodblock printing in Australia. I think a lot of people are quite fascinated by the carving of the actual wood blocks which are an artwork in themselves. There are so many cute things about the Japanese method of woodblock printing: the lovely little bamboo leaf covered baren used for rubbing the paper during printmaking, the small, funky horse hair brushes used to place the ink of the wood, bowls of watercolour inks, the small carving tools, and the use of beautiful Japanese papers. And what I really love is the portability of art form itself. If you're printing a small block, it's possible to set up and print in just about any space, even the floor! I've travelled with my tools (including carving tools) on international flights (post 9/11) with no trouble at all (not in my carry-on luggage of course!). I've just found this interesting article (with pictures) by Eva Pietzcker and Miriam Zegrer on Japanese woodblock, known as moku hanga in Japanese. It covers Japanese woodblock history, technique, materials and printing. They've even included pictures of cute brushes and baren discs.

The print seen here is a Japanese woodblock, Adabana, by Kyoto-based artist Richard Steiner.

miho museum

I'm having a few dramas with blogspot and so for 4 days these photos of Miho Museum have been up on my blog with no text. Hopefully the text will upload today.

Last week when I was shuffling through bits and pieces in a gorgeous old box of things from Japan, I re-found these postcard images of one of the most incredible museums I have ever been to. The Miho is a museum with a futuristic structure plonked in the middle of the mountains of Japan, about 90 minutes by train and bus from Kyoto. It was designed by the American-Chinese architect, I M Pei, who amongst other things, also designed the Pyramids of the Lourvre in Paris. Miho Museum is one of those places, if you like architecture, galleries, museums and art, you should make an effort to go to if you're ever visiting Japan. Why? It's urban structures poke vividly out of the mountains of Shiga and present to you, right from the entrance, a very modern view of how art and history can be viewed. In the hills of Shiga surrounded by rice farms, you just don't expect to see this. I've been there twice and would easily go again. The last visit was especially good. My Australian friend C was visiting and we packed homemade bento lunches, along with our chopsticks and a flask of green tea and set off for a perfect early summer's day.

all about washi

People often ask me questions about the kind of paper I use for my larger sized woodblock prints. In response I find myself going down a detailed conversational path about the wonders of washi, or Japanese handmade paper. There's an informative piece about washi on the website for an amazing looking shop called the Japanese Paper Place in Toronto. I really hope to be able go there some day and look at their collection of paper. So have a read of the washi article and discover how it's made, who uses it and why it's so strong. Even Japanese money (the notes) are made from washi! If you're ever in Kyoto there are washi shops around the centre of the city that you can visit. There's one on old Teramachi Dori and another near the corner of Shijo and Karasuma Dori. The paper in these places is so beautiful it will make you weep!

patterns of kingyo

I have a shirt I bought a few years ago covered in little kingyo (goldfish). It's a summer shirt and is sleeveless and given we're in the middle of another heatwave (38 degrees celcius yesterday and today) I decided to wear it the other day. When I first bought it, that shirt got a huge reaction from people in Japan. Goldfish or kingyo as the Japanese call them are a big part of the visual images connected to Japan. Like kimono, tea, sushi, and geta, for some reason goldfish are high up on that list too. All kinds of people came up to me and told me they liked my kingyo shirt. So when I decided to wear it a few days ago it made me 'homesick' for Kyoto and everything my mind associated with Japan and out popped this little kingyo card as a response to that mood. It also felt like a very Japan printmaking moment as I printed this, sweat rolling down my body as I rubbed the baren disc across the paper and wood block. I've spent many a sweaty day printing in the incredible humidity of a Japanese summer. Fortunately, Melbourne is a lot drier, but in 38 degrees you can still get pretty hot!