Busacca Gallery

Unframed Japanese woodblock print in colors, by the artist Keinen. This is a beautiful antique woodcut, printed on hand-made paper. Full of vibrant color and strong outlines, this particular wprint depicts a Japanese bird of prey cleaning itself. It's a kacho-e (bird and flower print), approximately 12-1/2" x 8-7/8", oban size, hinged into a mat but not framed. Condition: Some surface wear, creases, and stains.

Japanese woodblock printing, also known as ukiyo-e, is a traditional printing technique that originated in Japan during the Edo period (1603-1868). The technique involved carving an image onto a wooden block, inking the block, and then pressing it onto paper to create a print. During the Edo period, Japanese artists created a wide variety of ukiyo-e prints, including nature prints featuring birds of prey. These prints typically depicted eagles, hawks, and other birds of prey in their natural habitat, often with intricate details and vivid colors. One of the most famous Japanese artists known for his nature prints featuring birds of prey is Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849). Hokusai was a prolific artist who created thousands of prints during his lifetime, including his famous series "Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji," which included the iconic print "The Great Wave off Kanagawa." In addition to his landscape prints, Hokusai also created a series of prints featuring birds of prey, titled "Birds of Prey" (Taka, in Japanese). This series featured detailed illustrations of eagles, hawks, and other birds of prey, often depicted in flight or perched on tree branches. Another famous Japanese artist known for his nature prints featuring birds of prey is Ando Hiroshige (1797-1858). Hiroshige was a contemporary of Hokusai and was also a prolific ukiyo-e artist. His most famous series of prints is "The Fifty-three Stations of the Tokaido," which depicted scenes along the famous Tokaido road that connected Edo (modern-day Tokyo) to Kyoto. In addition to his landscape prints, Hiroshige also created a series of prints featuring birds of prey, titled "Eagle and Hawk" (Washi to Taka, in Japanese). This series featured detailed illustrations of eagles and hawks in flight, often with dramatic mountain landscapes in the background. Overall, Japanese woodblock printing played a significant role in the development of nature prints featuring birds of prey in Japan during the Edo period. The intricate details and vivid colors of these prints continue to be admired and studied by artists and art enthusiasts around the world.

Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woodblock_printing

Woodblock printing is a technique for printing text, images or patterns used widely throughout East Asia and originating in China in antiquity as a method of printing on textiles and later paper. As a method of printing on cloth, the earliest surviving examples from China date to before 220, and from Egypt to the 4th century. Ukiyo-e is the best known type of Japanese woodblock art print. Most European uses of the technique on paper are covered by the art term woodcut, except for the block-books produced mainly in the fifteenth century. The wood block is prepared as a relief matrix, which means the areas to show 'white' are cut away with a knife, chisel, or sandpaper leaving the characters or image to show in 'black' at the original surface level. The block was cut along the grain of the wood. It is only necessary to ink the block and bring it into firm and even contact with the paper or cloth to achieve an acceptable print. The content would of course print "in reverse" or mirror-image, a further complication when text was involved. The art of carving the woodcut is technically known as xylography, though the term is rarely used in English.

For colour printing, multiple blocks are used, each for one colour, although overprinting two colours may produce further colours on the print. Multiple colours can be printed by keying the paper to a frame around the woodblocks. There are three methods of printing to consider:

Stamping: Used for many fabrics, and most early European woodcuts (1400-40) These were printed by putting the paper or fabric on a table or other flat surface with the block on top, and pressing or hammering the back of the block. Young monks printing Buddhist scriptures using the rubbing technique, Sera Monastery, Tibet Rubbing: Apparently the most common for Far Eastern printing on paper at all times. Used for European woodcuts and block-books later in the fifteenth century, and very widely for cloth. The block goes face up on a table, with the paper or fabric on top. The back is rubbed with a "hard pad, a flat piece of wood, a burnisher, or a leather frotton".

Printing in a press: Presses only seem to have been used in Asia in relatively recent times. Simple weighted presses may have been used in Europe, but firm evidence is lacking. Later, printing-presses were used (from about 1480). A deceased Abbess of Mechelen in Flanders in 1465 had "unum instrumentum ad imprintendum scripturas et ymagines … cum 14 aliis lapideis printis" ("an instrument for printing texts and pictures … with 14 stones for printing") which is probably too early to be a Gutenberg-type printing press in that location. In addition, jia xie is a method for dyeing textiles (usually silk) using wood blocks invented in the 5th-6th centuries in China. An upper and a lower block is made, with carved out compartments opening to the back, fitted with plugs. The cloth, usually folded a number of times, is inserted and clamped between the two blocks. By unplugging the different compartments and filling them with dyes of different colours, a multi-coloured pattern can be printed over quite a large area of folded cloth. The method is not strictly printing however, as the pattern is not caused by pressure against the block.