Wood-Block Printing, by F. Morley Fletcher, Illustrated by A. W. Seaby
A Description of the Craft of Woodcutting and Colour Printing Based on the Japanese Practice
A free e-book, available for download from Project Gutenberg.
Traditional Japanese woodblock prints were produced by using very simple tools and techniques – but with extremely high levels of craftsmanship. No press or other machinery was used. The designs were cut on the cherry wood blocks using just a few cutting tools. The print was made using a round flat pad rubbed on the back of the print. Colours were mixed with water and rice flour paste. Deceptively simple tools and techniques, wonderfully rich, subtle, and beautiful results.
From the e-book:
There are two common ways of studying old and foreign arts — the way of the connoisseur and the way of the craftsman. The collector may value such arts for their strangeness and scarcity, while the artist finds in them stimulus in his own work and hints for new developments.The following account of colour-printing from wood-blocks is based on a study of the methods which were lately only practised in Japan, but which at an earlier time were to some degree in use in Europe also. The main principles of the art, indeed, were well known in the West long before colour prints were produced in Japan, and there is some reason to suppose that the Japanese may have founded their methods in imitating the prints taken from Europe by missionaries. Major Strange says: “The European art of chiaroscuro engraving is in all essentials identical with that of Japanese colour-printing…. It seems, therefore, not vain to point out that the accidental sight of one of the Italian colour-prints may have suggested the process to the Japanese.” The Italians aimed more at expressing “relief” and the Japanese at flat colour arrangements; the former used oily colours, and the latter fair distemper tints; these are the chief differences. Both in the West and the East the design was cut on the plank surface of the wood with a knife; not across the grain with a graver, as is done in most modern wood engraving, although large plank woodcuts were produced by Walter Crane and Herkomer, about thirty years ago, as posters.