Printing block

Printing block depicts the woodblock itself — most likely a carved plank of mountain cherry (yamazakura) viewed in close-up, the knife-cut areas reading as raised forms against the recessed ground, registration marks (kentō) cut into one corner. As a subject for a print, the block is doubly reflexive: the image is made by an instrument of the same kind as the one it represents. This interest in the materials and tools of mokuhanga was characteristic of sosaku-hanga, the creative-print movement that insisted the artist control all stages — design, carving, and printing — rather than delegate to specialist workshops as in commercial ukiyo-e. Ono, who was both a practicing printmaker and a historian of the movement, was particularly attentive to the technical underpinnings of the craft. Compositions of this kind typically isolate the block on a flat ground, with the carved relief itself supplying the strong directional contrast, making the work at once a still life and a self-portrait of the medium.