this is a followup of the previous post on the famous Japanese painting (actually a print) of the Wave.
a few videos on how the Japanese woodblock printing of the Edo period made picture books.
the YOUTUBE video has this explanation:
Master printer Keizaburo Matsuzaki visited the Art Gallery of New South Wales in March 2010 in conjunction with the exhibition ‘Hymn to beauty: the art of Utamaro’. He brought the woodblocks to create a print of ‘Takashima Ohisa, the teahouse waitress’, designed by Kitagawa Utamaro (1754–1806) in the 1790s. Matsuzaki hails from Arakawa-ku in Tokyo and has been a printer since he was fifteen years old. Gallery visitors were amazed to witness Matsuzaki's deft touch as he applied 17 colours with perfect alignment. Each colour was rubbed with the printer's most precious tool, the baren. The final touch was a dusting of mica.
another series on how to make a woodblock print: LINK
and a summary here:
Instructables has a written tutorial of this method but only of a one tone design.
The MetropolitanMuseum has an article on the history of the commercial side of woodblock printing.
each print required the collaboration of four experts: the designer, the engraver, the printer, and the publisher...Polychrome prints were made using a separate carved block for each color, which could number up to twenty. To print with precision using numerous blocks on a single paper sheet, a system of placing two cuts on the edge of each block to serve as alignment guides was employed. Paper made from the inner bark of mulberry trees was favored, as it was strong enough to withstand numerous rubbings on the various woodblocks and sufficiently absorbent to take up the ink and pigments. Reproductions, sometimes numbering in the thousands, could be made until the carvings on the woodblocks became worn.
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