Hand Made Washi

Here's the print in process with two more colors (two more blocks) added. This makes a total of five impressions so far, and the paper is holding up much better than it did for the previous print, when I noticed some paper fibers lifting during the printing.

Paper is another Mystery of Mokuhanga, another of the variables that can make or break your print. I mostly use Japanese hand made washi, a strong type of paper made from long fibers of kozo or gampi. The fibers are hand pounded, mixed with some stuff, and then hand molded using screens. (See this blog post about a paper-making family I visited in Japan in 2004.) The paper I'm using for this series of prints came from Woodlike Matsumura in Japan and is called Yukimi. To be honest, the main reason I chose this paper is because of its name — yukimi means "snow viewing" and I liked the idea of making fire prints on paper named for snow. I was able to take a chance on an untried paper because I almost always like whatever paper I buy from Matsumura-san.

Anyway, just as my bokashi vary from print to print because I'm not a machine, had made washi varies from batch to batch and sheet to sheet because it's made by human hands. So it's quite possible that the paper I'm using for this print is literally different than the paper I used for the Strike a Match print, even though it's the "same" paper.

For the record, I like Yukimi — it's strong and fairly thick, bright white, and colors don't dull on it.