David Bull | |
|---|---|
 David Bull in his Mokuhankan print party studio | |
| Born | 11 November 1951 Halifax, England |
| Known for | Woodblock printmaker |
| Style | Ukiyo-e |
| Website | mokuhankan woodblock |
David Bull (born 11 November 1951) is a Canadian ukiyo-e woodblock printer and carver who heads the Mokuhankan studio in Asakusa, Tokyo. [1] [2] Born in Britain, Bull moved to Canada at the age of 5. He first discovered Japanese woodblocks while working in a music shop in 1980 in Toronto, at 28, and started making his own prints without formal training. [1] [3]
Bull moved to Tokyo in 1986 to learn more about traditional Japanese woodblock printing. [3] [1] In 1989, he embarked on a ten-year project to recreate 100 images from Katsukawa Shunsho's 1775 Hyakunin isshu poetry book. [4]
He is known for his work on the Ukiyo-e Heroes kickstarter crowd-funding project together with Jed Henry, recreating modern videogame scenes in ukiyo-e style with traditional woodblock techniques. [5] [6] [7] The Mokuhankan studio has a shop and used to offer “print parties” for amateurs, where they could try the craft of printing. [8] During the pandemic, his shop temporarily shut down for three years, but his shop has now reopened without print parties.
From 2023-2024, Bull and Mokuhankan worked with the British Museum to produce 12 prints based on a previously obscure series of drawings by Hokusai which had been rediscovered in 2019 and acquired by the British Museum in 2020. [9] [10]
