Things move on

I start with this scroll, perhaps the one I liked best which went through the studio about three years ago, to be sold on somewhere in Europe.  It is the colour that attracts and the serenity of the face, it was  about six foot long and took up most of the workbench.  

Well the workbench went to another home this sunday, along with two drying boards, all eight foot long and just fitting into the van Dominic had rented, along with an 'Ali Baba' pot for the paste and various items, so the studio has at last started to be broken down.  LS is not too sad, it is a big event in his life but there is relief there also.  Kneeling all those years at the Japanese workbench is uncomfortable and then when his eye played up a few months back (now recovered) he called a halt to work.  Scrolls still to be sent to a client in Cyprus, and the Japanese conservator, Kesaki from the British Museum still to come this month for some other stuff there will be less to move.  LS was the conservator to work on the Japanese scrolls at the museum, in fact he set up the studio there, and pulled out a long list of all the things he bought in Japan to be shipped to England for the museum, written neatly in pencil it was a long list from the tatami mats to the brushes.  

We visited Kesaki last year to view the studio with friends and also to to look at the exhibition he was preparing on Japanese erotic scrolls, which has since been and gone.  I did not take photos at the time, doubt if it would have been allowed with the exhibition still to come, but it was just a much larger version of LS's studio, in fact the only photo of that time is in the restaurant when I got the waiter to take the party.

Watching the van go, I did feel a pang of loss, what will happen now, talk of papermaking has come up, for instance if we had a clear river/stream/or beck at the bottom of the garden this could be feasible.  Middle Mill near Solva would have been the ideal place but we are not moving to Wales....