Netsuke at the Bristol Museum

I popped into The Bristol Museum this week to find out about their netsuke collection. So lovely to be greeted by printmaker Melanie Wickham in the main reception. She pointed me in the right direction for their online collections, the Eastern Arts Gallery and contact details for Kate Newnham (Curator of Eastern Art and Culture at Bristol’s Museums, Galleries and Archives). I headed upstairs to the second floor to check out their tiny collection of Japanese netsuke in the Eastern Arts Gallery.

Eastern Art Gallery

The gallery is abundant with Chinese ceramics from the Ming, Tang and Song dynasty. A small group of Japanese netsuke labelled 'Miniature zodiac animals from Japan' sit in a Dragon themed glass cabinet. A crouching tiger, a monkey eating some fruit, a horse lying on its side curled up like a cat, a hare wearing a dress holding onto a cylindrical object and a coiled up sea creature. I have no pencil on me so I take a quick photo to remind me what is here. Taking a photograph is useful and there are positives to drawing from a photograph especially when the lens magnifies the detail. What is fascinating about seeing the real thing, is the intricately carved detail which flows around the entire netsuke. The detail in these tiny objects is breath taking and when I stop for a couple of hours to draw these netsuke, I take the time to appreciate what is in front of me, allowing more of an intimate connection with these beautiful works of art.

Booking a Netsuke Drawing Session

I head back to my studio and check out The Bristol Museum website. I find a list of 240 netsuke without images. All of these netsuke are in storage so I send an email to Kate Newnham to find out more about their netsuke collection with a view to drawing some of the netsuke animals from their online list.

A few days later I received an email back from Kate who has booked me in for a netsuke drawing session later on this month.

“No changing of place at a hundred miles an hour will make us one whit stronger, happier, or wiser. There was always more in the world than men could see, walked they ever so slowly; they will see it no better for going fast. The really precious things are thought and sight, not pace. It does a bullet no good to go fast; and a man, if he be truly a man, no harm to go slow; for his glory is not at all in going, but in being.”

— Ruskin from Alain de Botton's - The Art of Travel.

A Japanese Wood-Carving. Poem by Amy Lowell

Celebrating National Poetry Day

A Japanese Wood-Carving

High up above the open, welcoming door

It hangs, a piece of wood with colours dim. 

Once, long ago, it was a waving tree 

And knew the sun and shadow through the leaves 

Of forest trees, in a thick eastern wood.

The winter snows had bent its branches down,

The spring had swelled its buds with coming flowers, 

Summer had run like fire through its veins, 

While autumn pelted it with chestnut burrs, 

And strewed the leafy ground with acorn cups. 

Dark midnight storms had roared and crashed among 

Its branches, breaking here and there a limb; 

But every now and then broad sunlit days

Lovingly lingered, caught among the leaves. 

Yes, it had known all this, and yet to us

It does not speak of mossy forest ways, 

Of whispering pine trees or the shimmering birch; 

But of quick winds, and the salt, stinging sea! 

An artist once, with patient, careful knife, 

Had fashioned it like to the untamed sea. 

Here waves uprear themselves, their tops blown back 

By the gay, sunny wind, which whips the blue 

And breaks it into gleams and sparks of light. 

Among the flashing waves are two white birds 

Which swoop, and soar, and scream for very joy 

At the wild sport. Now diving quickly in,

Questing some glistening fish. Now flying up, 

Their dripping feathers shining in the sun, 

While the wet drops like little glints of light, 

Fall pattering backward to the parent sea. 

Gliding along the green and foam-flecked hollows, 

Or skimming some white crest about to break, 

The spirits of the sky deigning to stoop 

And play with ocean in a summer mood. 

Hanging above the high, wide open door, 

It brings to us in quiet, firelit room, 

The freedom of the earth's vast solitudes, 

Where heaping, sunny waves tumble and roll, 

And seabirds scream in wanton happiness.

Amy Lowell

Japanese Woodblock Printing Demo by Motoharu Asaka and Louise Rouse

“Motoharu Asaka, one of the last remaining master woodblock carvers in Japan, with more than 45 years experience and commissions from national museums and world-renowned contemporary artists, is visiting European institutions in Finland, Italy, France and the UK in September, 2015.”

— SpikePrintStudio

In June this year I eagerly booked a place on Motoharu Asaka’s workshop with a talk by Louise Rouse at Spike Print Studio in Bristol. The workshop took place last Wednesday 30th September.

As I enter the Spike Print Studio I can feel the excitement buzzing round the room as Motoharu Asaka prepares the woodblocks for this afternoon’s demo. He is busy dampening the woodblocks to stop them from drying out in the heat of this Indian summer afternoon.

Ukyio-e

Big plan chests in the centre of the print room are laid, edge to edge, with sheets of paper showing chronologically the stages of a full colour reproduction of Hokusai’s Great Wave. Motoharu Asaka carved these reproductions in the traditional Ukyio-e style. Motoharu’s skill is specifically woodblock carving and in keeping with the Ukyio-e tradition, his carved blocks are passed on to a professional woodblock printer to print.

Louise translates for Motoharu while he shows us the process of printing from his pre-carved mountain cherry wood block. Motoharu spent seventeen years as a woodblock carver apprentice. Although he also spent a ten year apprenticeship learning the art of Japanese woodblock printing, he says he is still an amateur. We all gasp in awe! This woodblock printing demonstration uses the traditional Ukiyo-e Japanese woodblock printing techniques and there is no room for mistakes.

Mountain Cherry Wood

I ask if Motoharu ever uses magnolia wood for carving. Louise explains that he mostly uses solid mountain cherry wood because the combination of the fine grain and sticky consistency of the fruit tree is much better for carving. He sometimes uses Shina ply for larger surface areas. Louise finds the magnolia much more difficult to carve because the grain can be inconsistent. It is useful to hear this as I have been wondering whether it would be good to experiment with different types of wood. Mountain cherry wood is very expensive and seems to be becoming more rare so it’s not easy to find a supplier. McCains Printmaking Supplies based in Portland Oregon, have started selling high quality Cherry Plywood blocks. A fellow workshop student recommended lemon or rock wood which might be easier to source in the UK.

Printing Tips

We are given tips on dampening the block, dampening the paper for quick prints, watering down the rice paste, how to stop watercolours from drying out, technique for brushing the ink across the block, how to hold and lay down the paper for the Kento registration. There is an art to every step. It will have taken Motoharu about two weeks to carve the main outline and about a month and a half to carve all the blocks.

Three Colour Prints

Finally we are all given the opportunity to print a three colour print from Motoharu’s woodblocks. Cats or Fish? It has to be cats. As I stand in the queue and watch the woman in front of me struggle with her first print I imagine that observing her learning curve will help my printing go nice and smoothly. How wrong I am!

Cat Prints

When it gets to my turn and I frantically rub the baren over the paper (for too long!) and as I pull the paper back, the sticky nori paste has pulled the ink away from the paper making fluffy yellow abstract prints. I’m not too disheartened and move on to the next block. The red is easier as I have cleaned off the block before I print this one and don’t take as long to rub the baren over the paper. The third block is the outline and prints fine. When I pull back the print, the “too long” baren rubbing technique has resulted in a composition of fluffy cats!

Thanks to Motoharu Asaka and Louise Rouse for making it to Bristol as part of their European tour. And thanks to Spike Print Studio for hosting this informative workshop in their lovely space.

Motoharu Asaka

Louise Rouse

Spike Print Studio