Mr. Kawakatsu No. 04
This lovely cover paper is from Japan and will not be produced again. Mr. Kawakatsu had one of the last remaining Katazome-shi (Japanese stencil-dyed paper) production studios. He died suddenly in early 2025, while neither elderly nor in poor health, and the studio closed without a successor, leading to the discontinuation of their Katazome-shi selection and marking a significant loss for this heritage craft. These richly colored papers were printed by hand, one color at a time, using persimmon-dyed kozo as the stencils, and aided by paste and "Gojiru" (soy bean juice), the pigments absorb deeply into the paper to produce long-lasting color.
The book has six signatures of white paper and is coptic-bound using fuchsia waxed linen thread. ~4.25×6" 112 pages. As an experiment, the second image imagines a similar book in a computer-generated setting.