Documentary “Weg van de Japanse houtsnede”

Craftsmanship lives in the heads, hands and hearts of professionals. Unfortunately, craftsmanship often disappears with the craftsmen. Based on the need to preserve craftsmanship, Focus Vakmanschap, in cooperation with various heritage partners, has developed a basic methodology to audiovisually document, share and activate craftsmanship. Discover the various cases, the methodology and toolbox used and the Focus Craftsmanship magazine here.

Our craft, Japanese woodblock printmaking, straddles the line between art and craft. Despite this, or perhaps because of it, we were lucky enough to be chosen as one of the cases in this project. Our collaboration with Focus Craftsmanship has resulted in a beautiful film. The film shows the different stages in the creation of a print: from design to cutting and printing. It also shows our passion, collaboration and research. A second part of the research resulted in our travelling mini-expo ‘The Way of Japanese Woodblock Prints’, where the film is shown continuously, with an accompanying catalogue (MokuBlad) and demonstrations. We also gave a lecture and workshops in Bokrijk.

Below you can watch the documentary. Spoken langauge is Dutch but using the CC English subtitling can be toggled.