Adachi Institute Woodblock Videos

Here's a very interesting little site I found while I was tootling around The Adachi Institute's Japanese site: CLICK ME The first page shows images of blocks used to produce Hokusai's Great Wave, and also shows the various individual impressions if you have a click around. If you click on 2 and 3 at the lower part of the screen a short video loads. 2 covers carving and 3 covers printing.
What I found most interesting about the carving video is how the block cutter uses his Hangito (knife). If you watch carefully he uses both the bevelled edge against the line and the flat edge. I assume this reduces the need to turn the block.
In the printing video it's also interesting to see that the printer uses a brush to wipe pigment onto the block rather than the small bamboo hakobi, which he just uses to stir the pigment.

Here's the link to The Adachi Institute's English Site and Japanese Site. The selection of prints available from the English site is tiny compared to it's larger parent Japanese site. I bought a copy of The Great Wave from them last year as a birthday present for myself and it really is beautiful.