A page from ‘Seasons’ book…

In Autumn 2023, during the japanese woodcut course, tutored by Carol Wilhide Justin at Morley college, the final project was a collaboration of 12 artist, making a japanese stab bound book. My contribution was a print of two olive trees. One is an ancient tree on the island of Kalymnos, I visited during the course. The other one is the young olive tree in my garden, that just fruited for the first time while I was away.

On the course we have tested different lightweight washi and gampi papers and traditional colour ink sticks from Japan. I have chosen the purple ink stick for the colour of olives. After we finished the 12 books with 12 prints, one from each artist, I have used the woodblock to create this unique ghost print. I have used ‘sashiko’ thread on the print edges in the same traditional stitch bind as we used on our books.