With a new book on order: "Search for a Whisky Bothy" by Ralf Mitchell, a few words came to mind:
"Howf" .. "Bothy" .. "But 'n' Ben" .. I grew up using these words .. all used for a specific purpose but they do share a descriptive similarity.
Its easy to "Google" the words and get a fair explanation.
HOWF: for me this was a small Fitters Workshop space, inside a large complex, used to store tools and some odd assortment of spare parts. This was at ICI Nobel division Ardeer.
BOTHY: was a small, stone and brick building, in the back garden of my Mom's eldest brother (uncle Tam)
BUT 'N' BEN: a small cottage style building in Dumfries and Galloway in SW Scotland that we lived in for 3 years. Picture of me on my fourth birthday, my dad standing in the doorway, worked at RAF station West Freugh near Stranraer:
Thursday, December 19, 2019
Saturday, December 14, 2019
Thursday, December 12, 2019
Book on Order .. Ralfy .. UPDATE with REVIEW
A first book from; Ralf Mitchell, a retired Undertaker/Embalmer. Ralfy based mostly in Glasgow Scotland, now living on the; Isle of Mann.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOnpfc8uqEw&t=1s
Author's comment: "A humorous autobiography by a whisky reviewer with a youtube channel called 'ralfydotcom' travelling from early childhood memories to an adults apprenticship with scotch and Scotland. People and places are explored and whisky is sampled, and all for the sake of malt-moments."
It's a couple of days after Xmas .. The book sits waiting for my son Andrew to pick up and read.
I finished reading it on Boxing day.. I've let it settle and now pen my review:
A doff O the Bunnet to Ralfy for having the courage to take this on and marketing it. No surprises in the story line, well animated characters, a comfortable read.. I do detect some literal E150 in a few stories and some chill filtering going on.. might just be my sensitivity.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOnpfc8uqEw&t=1s
Author's comment: "A humorous autobiography by a whisky reviewer with a youtube channel called 'ralfydotcom' travelling from early childhood memories to an adults apprenticship with scotch and Scotland. People and places are explored and whisky is sampled, and all for the sake of malt-moments."
It's a couple of days after Xmas .. The book sits waiting for my son Andrew to pick up and read.
I finished reading it on Boxing day.. I've let it settle and now pen my review:
A doff O the Bunnet to Ralfy for having the courage to take this on and marketing it. No surprises in the story line, well animated characters, a comfortable read.. I do detect some literal E150 in a few stories and some chill filtering going on.. might just be my sensitivity.
Friday, December 06, 2019
Eating porridge .. Chinese style
Hot porridge could help warm you and nourish your body in cold weather. In China, it's customary to eat red bean porridge on the first day of Major Snow and eight-treasure porridge on the eighth day of the last month of the lunar year. In addition, there are other varieties such as wheat porridge, sesame porridge, radish porridge, walnut porridge and tuckahoe porridge.
Wash the rice, put into the pot with tuckahoe powder and walnut, add the water to the water, use the fire first, and use the small fire to gently cook the rice, add Soy Sauce, Salt & Pepper Powder, as appropriate then stir.
Ingredients: Walnuts, 20 grams, rice 100 grams,White Tuckahoe Powder 15 grams, Salt 3 Grams, Pepper Powder 1 grams.
Wash the rice, put into the pot with tuckahoe powder and walnut, add the water to the water, use the fire first, and use the small fire to gently cook the rice, add Soy Sauce, Salt & Pepper Powder, as appropriate then stir.
Friday, November 29, 2019
Taiwan tea plantation workers terrace a new field
He hired workers to terrace another piece of land to expand his farm, and he is in the process of setting up a licensed tea processing factory that can support several farms. He wants to attract students and tourists to learn about this area’s history and try their hand at picking and processing tea, and hopes that his success will influence his neighbors to also revive their plantations.
Thursday, November 28, 2019
Chinese Baren in action
Nianhua: Chinese New Year Pictures, are a type of chromatic woodblock prints that have a long history dating back to the Western Han Dynasty (206 BC-AD 24).
Sunday, November 24, 2019
Tea time ...
Great: It's Tea Time:
I bought this set from a restaurant supply company in DaLang town, 大朗镇 near DongGuan, in 2005.
I bought this set from a restaurant supply company in DaLang town, 大朗镇 near DongGuan, in 2005.
Wednesday, November 20, 2019
Centuries-old printing technique makes a comeback
Letterpress,
a centuries-old printing technique, is making an elegant comeback in China as
designers, artists and consumers are rediscovering the beauty and craftsmanship
behind it.
Essentially a kind of movable type printing, letterpress is a
technique of relief printing that came into being in the mid-15th century.
German goldsmith Johannes Gutenberg converted a wine press into a printing
press, which turned inked letters into reams of books and remained as the norm
of printing for five centuries.
"The movable type printing is our heritage as it was
invented by Bi Sheng in the Northern Song Dynasty (960-1127) and then was
spread to the West some 400 years later," said Peng Junzhang, initiator of
China's first letterpress art festival.
Gutenberg's inventions played a key role in ushering in the era
of mass communication, adding fuel to the Renaissance and the Reformation,
which enlightened minds and permanently altered the structure of society.
In the
West, the computer revolution in the 1970s gave birth to cheaper, faster ways
of transferring words and images onto paper, dooming the old practice of
arranging clunky type blocks in a massive metal press to obsolescence.
After nearly three decades in oblivion, letterpress came back
from the dead as its aesthetic appeal was extolled by media personalities such
as Martha Stewart, also known as Queen of Domestic Arts in the US. In the
1990s, her weddings magazine began featuring personalized letterpress
invitations, giving rise to the revival of the retro-style printing craft.
While in China, letterpress had remained as the mainstay of the
printing industry until Chinese scientist Wang Xuan fathered Chinese character
laser-photo-typesetting system in 1974 that gradually brought Chinese character
printing into the electrical and digital age.
The revival of letterpress has been in full swing in other parts
of the world over the past decade.
Josh
Durham, a history teacher from the US, and his wife evangelized China's letterpress-printed
art movement when they opened the Paper Pounder Press in July 2011 in Beijing.
"So far, there are no more than 20 letterpress studios in
China," Peng noted. "The printing technique is still under the radar
in China. But I believe it is set to flourish like it did in many other
countries."
Having frequented numerous international letterpress festivals
over the past few years, Peng was so impressed by the beauty and design of
those letterpress products that he decided to host one in China.
His dream came true on October 18 when industry practitioners,
letterpress devotees, teachers and students of design majors from home and
abroad attended the festival in Beijing, joining their hands to preserve and
promote the art and craft.
"People in the cultural and creative industries have found
that letterpress is highly valuable to their creations and businesses,"
said Sun Yang, founder of iloovee, a Beijing-based letterpress studio known for
its wedding invites.
"A
printing technique that I thought had faded in the back pages of the industry
history has come back to life. What a surprise!" said Liang Jiong,
associate professor of Prepress with the Beijing Institute of Graphic
Communication.
She got a bigger surprise on learning that some artisans have
held fast to the art and craft of letterpress printing for decades.
Chang Chieh-kuan is such an example. The 67-year-old operates
the famed Rixing Type Foundry which his father founded in 1969 in Taipei.
His foundry is the only haven left in the world that still
produces traditional Chinese movable type character molds for letterpress
printing.
"But in the 1980s, lead type foundries, the all-time leader
of the traditional printing industry, dropped like flies in Taiwan," Chang
recalled.
Despite
the industry's unrecoverable demise, Chang, calling himself a headstrong fool
from Taiwan, has managed to keep Rixing in operation.
It is meaningful to keep the foundry alive as founding played a
significant role in the history of mankind's civilization, said Chang, who is
transforming Rixing into an interactive museum.
In traditional letterpress printing, founding is the very first
step of the whole laborious process followed by checking, typesetting,
printing, and folding; the revived technique is technologically upgraded and
thus less laborious.
Cha Dian, literally meaning "Tea canon", featuring a letterpress printed cover is crowned as China’s Most Beautiful Book in 2017.
Cha Dian, literally meaning "Tea canon", featuring a letterpress printed cover is crowned as China’s Most Beautiful Book in 2017.
To create a letterpress item, a photopolymer plate featuring a
digitally-created design made in Illustrator or InDesign is first customized.
Properly inked, the raised surface of the plate then bites into the soft, thick
paper made from cotton or linen, under the force applied to an antique press.
The Rixing Type Foundry in Taipei boasts the last collection of copper molds used in the creation of traditional Chinese type characters
The Rixing Type Foundry in Taipei boasts the last collection of copper molds used in the creation of traditional Chinese type characters
The process yields a solid impression on the paper that is
stunning to see and feel. However, such a debossed effect could not be realized
on thin paper in traditional letterpress printing. Nor is it valued by the
traditional letterpress craftsmen and their clients. What they most value is a
printer's ability of making sure each stroke of a character is adequately and
evenly inked, Chang said.
"The
revival of letterpress lies in its marriage with ideal ink and paper, creating
an irresistible quality. That's what attracts designers and consumers
essentially," noted Liang, who is planning to introduce letterpress to her
students aside from teaching them mainstream printing techniques such as
lithography.
Thanks to the newfound visual and tactile appeal, an increasing
number of artisans are embracing this aged technique.
Featuring letterpress cards with original designs, custom design
services, and courses on letterpress printing, a workshop called Wu Fen Shu in
East China's Hangzhou has fared well since its opening in June, according to
Zhou Zi, the workshop's co-owner.
Zhou is one of the entrepreneurs who are eyeing the market of
letterpress workshops that focus on customizing letterpress products and
offering hands-on experience on a manual press.
Zhou, a
fresh graduate of visual communication design, decided to open such a shop upon
graduation with two of her college buddies who are also fascinated with
letterpress thanks partly to what used to trouble them back in college.
"We used to commission printing factories to get our
designs printed in small numbers, but more often than not, we were rejected as
they only took orders requiring at least hundreds of copies," the young
designer told this website.
Noting that many more design majors like them have been beset by
such a headache, Zhou and her buddies thought about creating a workshop that
takes small orders to create convenience for students who are of weak spending
power.
In addition to serving students, the 110-square-meter workshop
also attracts many who are eager to try their hands on an ancient letterpress
machine to DIY their own letterpress items, each paying about 200 yuan to 500
yuan ($28.52-$71.3).
Despite the high price, it seems more people are being drawn to
this kind of ancient printing technique. "Some companies even organized
their team building parties in our workshop, which is sort of out of my
expectation," said Zhou.
The
endeavors of artisans and designers have borne fruit as letterpress-printed
products are winning more and more consumers in China.
"The beauty and elegance inhering in letterpress have kept
drawing people to know about it, and pay higher prices for letterpress
products," said Peng Junzhang, a letterpress enthusiast, better known as
the king of high-end business cards in China.
who remolded the letterpress machine to make it less
demanding and more efficient, applied the printing technique to business card
making, which turned out to be a huge success.
"Although the need for exchanging business cards is
shrinking in the age of social media, upscale ones, each priced at 300 yuan
($42.45) or more, are in greater demand than those priced at around 30 yuan
($4.25)," Peng noted.
Letterpress-printed
business cards made with stylish designs are favored by those who want to
showcase their tastes, Peng added.
Thursday, November 14, 2019
Teapot sold for one million pounds at auction
5in-tall china pot as being that of Chinese emperor Qianlong, who reigned between 1735 and 1796.
Dukes Head of Asian Art and Managing Director, Lee Young with the teapot.
Monday, November 11, 2019
Saturday, November 09, 2019
Friday, November 08, 2019
Friday, November 01, 2019
Wednesday, October 30, 2019
Saturday, October 26, 2019
Tokyo's Jimbocho Book shoppers meca
Mix & blend Tokyo: Adventures in tea through the seasons
Mix & Blend Tokyo:Adventures in tea through the seasonsA wisp of vapor rising from a teakettle … the robust aroma of roasted hōjicha … the subtle sweetness of classic green sencha … every stimulus conspires to soothe your senses in the quiet sanctuary of Sakurai Japanese Tea Experience, a hideaway perched above the lively streets of Omotesando, Tokyo’s premier fashion district.
“I was trained to serve with poise and efficiency at a bar counter,” says tea master Shinya Sakurai, looking back on his bartender days. “The need for controlled yet flowing motion had a lot in common with the stringent procedures of the tea ceremony.”
“I was trained to serve with poise and efficiency at a bar counter,” says tea master Shinya Sakurai, looking back on his bartender days. “The need for controlled yet flowing motion had a lot in common with the stringent procedures of the tea ceremony.”
An important responsibiliy: Shinya Sakurai operates his roasting machine with the air of a dedicated scientist.
Today he serves tea following his own interpretation of the decorous ryūrei (tea ceremony performed with tables and chairs instead of on tatami) table style from the Urasenke tradition. “I first ask customers about their preferences in tea. If they arrive after a meal, I’ll recommend teas according to what they’ve eaten.”
Offering up the second and third brews with just the right timing, the tea servers exchange only a few words with their clientele across the counter, reminiscent of the low-key conversation at a bar. The staff’s disciplined movements add a pleasant tension to this tranquil space, where time slows to a standstill. The blend of elements is inimitably Sakurai’s.
The perfect pairing: Wagashi Japanese sweets are an indispensable accompaniment to Japanese tea. The shop’s selection ranges from its signature bite-sized sweets to seasonal specialties.“I hope to convey the spirit with which Japanese observe the changes of the seasons,” Sakurai says. Based on the old calendar’s 24 seasonal divisions of the year, his shop offers a menu of tea blends and wagashi Japanese sweets that changes twice a month. Autumn features such combinations as green tea with persimmon, ginkgo, yuzu citrus or apple. Sakurai sometimes will blend tea by request, much as bartenders oblige with custom cocktails. The personalized service and seasonal blends entice customers to come back for more.Surprising variety: Sakurai’s shop handles as many as 30 types of tea leaf. Teas used for hōjicha (roasted green tea), which is roasted to order, vary depending on whether they are for light or dark roasting.
Kitagawa Utamaro (1753-1806)
Studies from Nature': Kitagawa Utamaro's glorious prints
The early 1780s were a difficult time for the shogunate, Japan’s feudal government. Though the country was at peace, one of the worst famines on record was wreaking havoc across the land. Making matters worse, epidemics and natural disasters were rife. The peasantry was never far from open revolt.
In his late 20s at the time, Kitagawa Utamaro (1753-1806), a painter and ukiyo-e print designer, was no doubt aware of the surrounding misery. But in Edo, the capital, a dynamic metropolis of more than a million inhabitants, its impact was limited. Besides, Utamaro’s congenial social circle of young artists provided constant entertainment that must have buffeted some of the social dislocation.
In 1783, he moved into the house of a friend, Tsutaya Juzaburo (1750-97), one of the most influential publishers of his generation (the modern-day Japanese book store partly chose its name as a nod to him), thereby plunging head on into the “floating world.” It is no exaggeration to say that his life would never be the same again.
Tsutaya was a creature of the pleasure quarters. His closest acquaintances were authors and painters, some established, others dilettantes, with whom he spent many a night carousing in the tea houses and geisha establishments of the capital. Tsutaya’s bookshop, which also traded in ukiyo-e woodblock prints, was conveniently located by the main gate of Yoshiwara, home to most of Edo’s courtesans, where it catered to its gay and gallant clientele.
To the bon vivants around him, Tsutaya was a sort of Ragueneau, the colorful patissier and faithful companion to Cyrano de Bergerac, who, when not providing moral encouragement to would-be poets like him, was generously offering free sustenance to those down on their luck. Utamaro lodged with Tsutaya for more than 15 years. Many other creative types likewise benefitted from the publisher’s largesse.
Tsutaya was also an amateur versifier and specialist of kyōka, a form of witty, irreverent and humorous poetry which, in the 1780s, was growing in popularity. It perfectly fitted the times: While the country metaphorically burned, social conventions were loosening, censorship rules relaxed. These were good times for Edo’s epicureans.
Alas, it did not last. The shogunate soon reasserted itself through conservative reforms and strict censorship laws. These, however, did not prevent Tsutaya from launching one of the most consequential and successful ventures of his career: The publication of three anthologies of kyōka poetry, all illustrated by Utamaro. The first, published in two albums in 1788, was the “The Book of Crawling Creatures.” It was followed a year later by “Gifts of the Ebb Tide” and, in 1791, by the two-volume “The Book of Myriad Birds.” All were popular and sold very well. Today, original copies are exceedingly rare.
This summer, The Folio Society, a London-based publisher of fine books, released a facsimile of all five volumes in a limited edition of 500 copies titled “Studies from Nature.” The result is nothing short of glorious, and even that might be an understatement.
Folio meticulously reproduced the gaufrage on some of the original woodblock prints, thereby adding texture to water, flowers or the plumage of birds. It found innovative ways to add a lustrous shine to the wings of insects, thus recreating the effect of mica that had been used by 18th-century printers for the same purpose. It chose paper to mimic the original and it bound all volumes as they were then, Japanese or concertina-style. Finally, all kyōka verses have been translated in a companion volume, each with its own commentary, and three essays detail the historical and cultural context of the works.
At £495 (about ¥69,000), the price is admittedly steep, but not unreasonable given the quality of the workmanship and scholarship.
These tomes constitute a watershed in Utamaro’s oeuvre. Neither he nor Tsutaya — nor any other publisher for that matter — quite reached the same heights again. As a print designer, however, Utamaro’s best work still lay ahead.
From the 1790s onwards, he devoted enormous energy, obsessively at times, to the design of bijinga (prints of beautiful women). Why he became so engrossed with this topic remains somewhat controversial. A bit of a roue, Utamaro spent much time in Yoshiwara, so his interest for the demimonde should not be surprising. But bijinga were also a moneymaker, and some scholars have posited that his large output was partly stimulated by a desire to ease the financial difficulties of his friend Tsutaya, the publisher, who, in 1791, fell foul of government regulations and was so heavily fined that he lost half his wealth. Be that as it may, these prints made Utamaro’s career and reputation. Today, they can sell for tens of thousands of dollars.
By the early 1800s, the shogunate had regained its footing. Despite periodic crackdowns, the publishing industry was also doing well, bolstered by demand from an increasingly literate and mobile population. By then, however, Utamaro’s best years were behind. In 1804, he had a run-in with the law that resulted in a three-day jail spell and a conviction to wear manacles for another 50. Two years later, he died.
Utamaro is justly remembered as one of the greatest ukiyo-e print designers of the second half of the 18th century. His collaborative work with authors and poets however, is far less recognized, at least in the West. “Studies from Nature” brilliantly sets the record straight.
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