Japanese woodblock prints are those images one associates with artists such as Hiroshige, Kuniyoshi, Utamaro and Hokusai, who produced beautiful prints of luminous colour around 150-200 years ago during the Japanese Edo (present-day Tokyo) period. This form of printmaking was known as ‘Ukiyo-e’, or ‘prints from the floating world’. The method we will use to carve the block will not differ that much from this original way of working.The class will cover the use and maintenance of Japanese tools, the Kento registration system, oriental papers, printing with a baren and the use of water-based pigments.

Elspeth Lamb taught printmaking at Edinburgh College of Art for 21 years. Since then she has been an independent artist who has run many workshops. Lamb has been interested in Mokuhanga and Japanese papermaking since she first visited Japan in 2000 as an artist in residence studying traditional techniques.

Lamb participated in the Tamarind Printer Training programme at the University of New Mexico in 1985: a demanding course which trains students to become master printers. Since then she has been on both sides of the press, collaborating with major Scottish artists.

She often exhibits at the Royal Scottish Academy and last year the Royal Academy in London selected one of her collages from the RA Summer exhibition to be reproduced in print. Her work has been exhibited, and is held in major collections in the UK and worldwide.