enty or thirty sheets
will be found sufficient for three days' hard work. The professional
printers of Japan, however, print batches of two hundred and three
hundred prints at a time, but in that case the work must become largely
mechanical.[4]

[4] See Chapter XIII for further experience on this point.

The batch of paper and damping sheets should remain between the boards
for at least half an hour when new sheets are being damped for the first
time. The damping sheets, all but the top and bottom ones, should then
be removed and the printing sheets left together between the boards for
some time before printing. An hour improves their condition very much,
the moisture spreading equally throughout the batch of sheets. Before
printing they should be quite flat and soft, but scarcely moist to the
touch. If the sheets are new, they may even be left standing all night
after the first damping, and will be in perfect condition for printing
in the morning without further damping. No weight should be placed on
the boards.

Although no paper has hitherto been found that will take so perfect an
impression from colour-blocks as the long-fibred Japanese paper, yet it
should be the aim of all craftsmen to become independent of foreign
materials as far as possible. There is no doubt that our paper-makers
should be able to produce a paper of good quality sufficiently absorbent
to take colour from the wet block and yet tough enough to bear handling
when slightly damp.

If a short-fibred paper is made without size, it comes to pieces when it
is damped for printing. But the amount of absorbency required is not so
great as to preclude the use of size altogether. It is a problem which
our paper-makers could surely solve. A soft, slightly absorbent, white
paper is required. At present nothing has been produced to take the
place of the long mulberry fibre of the Japanese, which prints
perfectly, but it is far from being pure white in colour. A white paper
would have a great advantage in printing high and delicate colour
schemes.

INK

Next in importance is the preparation of the ink for printing the
key-block or any black or grey parts of a design. As a rule the
key-block is printed black, more or less diluted with paste; indeed the
key-block is often printed very faintly by means of paste only just
tinged with a trace of black.

The use of colour for the key-block is treated in Chapter VII. The ink
is prepared as follows. Take a