Travel Light, Take A Class: Part II, Sketchbook Binding in Kita Ward, Kyoto

Keeping with the tradition of arriving early, I found myself very entertained by this butterfly outside of the Matsuda Seihon Studio while waiting for my class to begin. This was after spending some of my morning enjoying Nijo Castle, which while crowded was a very fascinating experience at a World Heritage Site. If you pay close attention, you can hear the chirps of the famous Nightengale Floors. Over time it became a popular belief that these floors in the castle were made to sing to detect intruders; though some say the sound is really just the nails as they wear down the floors over time. 

I do not suffer a shortage of sketchbooks. I will always be willing to add more sketchbooks to my collection. Sketchbooks & journals are very important to my artistic process, they contain multitudes of creativity that are a kind of fingerprint for each artist. These sketchbooks are where we process our ideas or concepts; plan more complex pieces & meditate. Sketchbooks can even be complete works of art themselves.

The fingerprint of the Matsuda family is the book binding process itself. The Matsudas have been in this practice for multiple generations, with much knowledge & experience passed between them. For our purposes in this class, we have taken pieces of washi paper to decorate the interior pages of the sketchbook cover by creating patterns in thread to glue inside within them. We also up-cycled cloth used for swatches on various kimono; the sketchbooks we were binding can be great journals for painting swatches for any artist’s variety of color pallets, & I believe this is how I will ultimately use my own.

My favorite part of the experience was watching the expert use the vintage industrial paper cutter to create the perfect pages for our sketchbooks & I urge anyone to take this class to enjoy this part of the experience first-hand. I had a lot of fun painting a mountain scene, & the mountains around Kyoto made me feel homesick for the Vermont landscape I have greatly come to enjoy living in at home. Spring had sprung & most of the landscape surrounding Kyoto were an enjoyable smorgasbord of greens; bamboo being the brightest among them.  Now that I am home I am excited to see more flowers & new greenery every day. 

After stitching & pressing our books together, we were treated to tea & snacks. I made my way back to my new favorite spot in Kyoto, the Teramachi Shopping Arcade near Nishiki Market. This is where I enjoyed a wonderful bowl of beef ramen.

Enjoy some Bonus Photos from my walk to Toji Temple

Thanks for Reading