Description
This new title from the old school press provides an important record of an era of Japanese papermaking in the Fukushima province of Japan, an area with a thousand-year history of papermaking which is now on the brink of extinction.
The book is introduced by paper and textile artist Eleanor Burkett and retired papermaker Koichi Anzai, with a foreword by renowned paper historian Sidney E. Berger.
Thirty atmospheric black-and-white photographs recording the Anzai family and others at work in the 1950s are tipped in, each accompanied by a commentary by Burkett on the processes the families used, with the recollections of Koichi Anzai and other significant figures from his papermaking village. Each group of photographs is preceded by a title in Japanese script printed from original calligraphy by Yoko Hashimoto.
Samples of twelve different papers that were once made in the area are tipped into each copy. they include three benibana papers (dyed with safflower), one in a gorgeous pink, a second in light pink with petals, and a third with only petals; three aizome papers dyed in different shades of indigo; a walnut-dyed crushed paper; two kigami (pure kozo) papers, one of which is at least thirty years old and the other recently made; a sujigami paper (paper with flecks of bark); and two compliment slips. The makers are all identified.
The text has been hand-set in Monotype Fournier italic with stempel optima, and just 150 copies have been printed letterpress on Mohawk superfine. the photographs have been printed digitally and tipped in. The quarter-cloth binding has end-papers of an Abbey Mill laid paper, with a suminagashi (‘floating ink’) paper by Sarah Amatt on the boards.
120pp. Page size: 300 mm by 215 mm.
Limited edition of 150 of which 138 are for sale.
