About the Artist, Yoshiko Yamamoto
Yamamoto grew up in Tokyo Japan. She studied sculpture at Tama Art University in Japan, then, after moving to California, studied music and modern American and Japanese history at the University of California, Berkeley. In 1996, she worked as a freelance writer about food and architecture. Then working together with her husband she founded The Arts & Crafts Press, in Berkeley California.

The Arts & Crafts Press remains a small letterpress printing studio dedicated to high quality craftsmanship. Begun as a publishing house concerned with the historic Arts and Crafts movement, all the publications of The Arts and Crafts Press have been letterpress printed and bound by hand. Today the Press produces greeting cards and limited-edition blockprints that are letterpress printed from hand cut blocks inspired by the turn-of-the-century movement.
To create limited edition prints Yamamoto sketches flora and fauna found either in America or her native Japan. After multiple drawings and watercolors she begins cutting the blocks. Sometimes in wood blocks, usually cherry, and other times, linoleum blocks. She will use hard polymer plates for some of the color blocks. Printing each color separately on a Vandercook printing press as many as twenty blocks per print to achieve the finished product.
See Our Collection of Yoshiko Yamamoto Designs
|