Hand-rubbed color woodblock prints made using the Japanese hanga method

 
 

Hanga Printmaking

 
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Color Woodprints Made Using the traditional Japanese hanga Method

The hanga method is printing from multiple color wood blocks using water. Most Western print-making techniques have used oil as the medium for printing (we are addicted to oil!) Printmaking (as well as painting) in Asia has a history that relies on water.

Oil goes well with metal machinery . . . it is its blood! Water goes well with living things that depend on water, like wood, and our own human bodies. So printing with water works best done by hand, using a baren. Emphasis on water as a medium in art and writing, and a tradition of disciplined use of the human body in the production of craft, may have a lot to do with why Japan hosts a strong tradition of printing with water. This is reflected in the term to describe many Japanese prints: ukiyo-e, or floating world.

I have been working the craft of color woodblock print-making since January, 1993. Years spent working in the building trades after college (particularly cabinet-making) contributed a lot to the development of my printmaking. Self-taught, my pursuit in the first few years was mostly in isolation. Being able to spend time with the Japanese prints, at home, with friends and neighbors who own prints, at several museums, through books, was key. In my craft I feel often the beneficiary of the work and discoveries of generations of artists and craftsmen, most Japanese but not all. Finding Walter Phillips' book Technique of the Colour Woodcut was very helpful.

 
     
A print by Harunobu, the first artist to introduce the multiple color block technique
Print by Kuniyoshi, showing a carver at work
Print by Emil Orlik, of Czechoslavakia, showing a printer at work
 

About Learning the Craft

  
 

It seems odd to me now that I eagerly worked for over a year re-inventing for myself this woodblock technique with almost no knowledge of all the effort other Westerners had put to the same task. I actually thought I was onto something new and different!

A bit of how my learning has progressed is symbolized by the tool I use to provide pressure for printing, the baren. Unlike so much that is Japanese, the baren seems to be entirely indigenous to Japan. Though of course any round flat object can be used to press paper to wood, a real handmade hon baren can do this job unlike anything else. I paid Mr. Gosho $600 for the one I like best. It took him two months to make. For years I used a modern plastic disc baren, unable to imagine that such an investment in a tool from the past could be justified. I see now the one made by hand entirely of paper and bamboo can't be beat. It is powerful (requiring less effort to get good color), and at the same time feels flexible and sensitive. Using this tool to print I am certainly no longer out by myself in unknown territory . . . I have Mr. Gosho's work and the work of centuries of dedicated Japanese craftsmen right in my hand. With all this help, I better do a good job now!

Here is my hon baren without its bamboo-leaf cover. The coils are twisted cords of bamboo strand, braided and laid into a paper disc with a rim.
Using Mr. Gosho's baren at my printing bench in the shop.
     

 


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