Guest Teacher: April Vollmer

Mokuhanga means woodcut printing in Japanese, hanga is printmaking and moku is wood. The Japanese term ukiyo-e can be roughly translated as ‘pictures of the floating world’ and refers to prints, paintings, books and other images from the Edo period (1603-1868). Ukiyo-e woodcut prints, such as Hiroshige’s series Fifty-three Stations of the Tokaido Road, were initiated by a publisher who hired the artist, carvers and printers from separate small shops and coordinated their work to make popular prints for sale.